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THE MODERN STUDENTS LIBRARY 



A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 
AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 



THE MODERN 
STUDENT'S LIBRARY 

EACH VOLUME EDITED BY A LEADING 
AMERICAN AUTHORITY 

WILL D. HOWE, General Editor 

This series is composed of such works as 
are conspicuous in the province of literature 
for their enduring influence. Every volume 
is recognized as essential to a liberal edu- 
cation' and will tend to infuse a love for true 
literature and an appreciation of the quali- 
ties which cause it to endure. 

A descriptive list of the volumes published in 

this series appears in the last pages 

of this volume 

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 



THE MODERN STUDENT'S LIBRARY 



A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 
AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 

BY 

HENRY DAVID THOREAU 



EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
BY 

ODELL SHEPARD 

JAMBS J. GOODWIN PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH 
IN TRINITY COLLEGE, CONNECTICUT 



CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

NEW YORK CHICAGO BOSTON 






COPY«IGHT, 19*1, BT 

CHAKLE8 SCRIBNER'8 SONS 
A 



M n 1^'-^' 



THE SCRIBNER PRESS 



.CU614677 



TO 

BLISS PERRY 

CONNOISSEUR IN LETTERS, RIVERS, 
AND MTTLE TOWNS 



CONTENTS 

Page 

Concord River 1 

Saturday 6 

Sunday 27 

Monday 83 

Tuesday 130 

Wednesday 173 

Thursday 221 

Friday 247 



INTRODUCTION 

Among the belongings of Henry David Thoreau which are 
shown to the visitor in Concord — his bed, his chair and 
writing-desk, his quill, and the buckskin suit given him by 
an Indian friend — is a curious walking-stick which was cut 
from a cherry tree sixty or seventy years ago by a man who 
knew how to use a jack-knife. There are few pieces of dead 
wood that one would give more to possess. It has gone 
walking with Emerson and Hawthorne; it has "travelled 
much in Concord," as also in Sudbury, Lincoln, Acton, 
Carlisle, and Billerica; it may have climbed Monadnock 
or tapped its way through the Tuckerman Ravine; it has 
been intimate with a man who allowed few intimacies, and 
that in his best moments, when he was alone in swamp or 
forest or out with the moon at midnight listening to the 
baying of dogs in distant farmsteads. 

Despite these noble memories, however, it is a very ordi- 
nary walking-stick, except in the particular that it has been 
whittled flat along one side and notched to the length of 
twenty-four inches. Here, indeed, is a peculiarity. Usually, 
when one takes his walking-stick from the corner, he slams 
the door on mathematics and cuts across lots, content to 
measure his distances by simple fatigue and hunger and thirst. 
But here is a stick which combines rambling with routine. 
It can measure a mountain or a field-mouse. It can either 
ignore boundaries or make them. It is, in short, a most 
self-contradictory, paradoxical stick, and a perfect repre- 
sentative, therefore, of the vagabond-surveyor who cut and 
carried it. 

What were the gods about when they condemned this 
dreamer, this leaper of fences, this scorner of property, to 
earn his livelihood by surveying other men's woodlots? 
Hear the man whose name is set down on one of the best 
maps of Concord as "H. D. Thoreau, Civ. Eng^" sighing 

vii 



viii INTRODUCTION 

for "a people who would begin by burning the fences and 
letting the forest stand!" In a vision of the night he sees 
''the fences half consumed, and some worldly miser with 
a surveyor looking after his bounds, while heaven had taken 
place around him. ... I looked again and saw him stand- 
ing in a boggy Stygian fen, surrounded by devils, and he 
had found his bounds without a doubt, — three little stones 
where a stake had been driven. And I saw that the Prince 
of Darkness was liis surveyor." 

And yet, although the fact has seldom been recognized 
by those who can see in him only a misanthropic lover of 
the wild, Thoreau was quite as much interested in fences as 
he was in forests. He could never decide between the two. 
As in the America of his day the ancient warfare of forests 
and fences went ceaselessly on, so in his mind. It was no 
condemnation of the gods, it was not chance or fate or poverty 
or any external compulsion whatsoever, but just the conflict 
of two deadly opposites deep-rooted in his mind, which 
drove Thoreau from forests to fences, from dreams to mathe- 
matics, and back again. The more one knows of him the 
less one feels inclined to say whether he was more at home, 
was more content, with a theodolite or with a pen. When 
the pen mood was on him, as we have seen, he could damn 
the theodolite and all its works; but we shall never know 
what he thought and felt of his rambling inaccurate pen 
when the surveyor had his innings. Like all his brother 
Transcendentalists, he was a lover of the hazy and ill-defined, 
and he was a master of hyperbole. Unlike most of them, 
he was a lover and master of accurate processes as well. 
Certainly his herbarium, which now gathers dust in the 
Concord Public Library, — orderly, neat, exact, and well- 
nigh exhaustive for his neighborhood — is not the least 
impressive and characteristic of his works. He was an 
impassioned measurer and ganger, and he caught his death 
in a way as significant as that of Francis Bacon, while count- 
ing the growth rings on felled timber. He never decided 
which is the better and more direct approach to nature's 
arcana, — revery or algebra. After he had tried and failed 
to express Walden Pond in mystic dithyrambs, he went 
at it again with logarithms and plumb-line. To the ill- 
regulated geniuses who lived about him he seemed a marvel 
of manual dexterity, of routine, of purposeful activity. He 



INTRODUCTION ix 

drove a nail more deftly than he ever did a paragraph, and 
he would have scorned to own a boat with such seams as 
yawn in all but one or two of his essays. There was some- 
thing lost as well as something gained when Thoreau turned 
aside from the delvuig, building, bridging work of America 
in his generation to toy with pen and paper at Concord. 
In the terms of the alchemists, however, the corruption of 
an engineer was the making of a poet, — and possibly the 
best poets are those who have wanted to be something else, 
but could not. 

Surely the gods must have prepared themselves for amuse- 
ment when they confined a Yogee and a Yankee, a mystic 
and a mathematician, a seer and a surveyor, in one human 
skin. Undoubtedly there was sometliing grandly humorous 
in the combination, — 

"Yet half a beast is the great god Pan, 
To laugh as he sits by the river, 
Making a poet out of a man !" 

Up from the conflict thus foreordained in Thoreau rose the 
bubbles of his perennial paradox. Thence came all his 
weathercock mood's and fancies. All his life long, the car- 
penter kept up with the poet in him an endless colloquy, of 
which the twenty volumes of his published works are a 
stenographic report. All his life, Thoreau the vagabond 
rambled about with a walking-stick, but Thoreau the sur- 
veyor used it as a measuring rod. 

How much can be done with a measuring rod two feet in 
length depends upon the imagination and the mathematics 
of the man who carries it. Just here it is well to remember 
that the central and most remarkable thing about Thoreau 
was his ability to make a very little go a very great way. 
New England thrift found in this man, whose ''greatest 
wealth was to want but little," a more shining example 
than even in Benjamin Franklin. "Economy" is his most 
characteristic essay. No man ever scanned his pennyworth 
more narrowly, no man ever drove a shrewder Yankee 
bargain with the world, no man was ever framed to get better 
service out of a two-foot measure, than he. Holding his 
stick at arm's length, he saw that it was taller than Monad- 
nock and longer than the Milky Way — of course because 



X INTRODUCTION 

it was nearer to him than the mountain or the sky. Thus 
he learned perspective. What was near at hand, however 
insignificant in appearance, always bulked huge and momen- 
tous to him ; but the distances dwindled swiftly to a point. 
He kept throughout his life this naive innocence of the eye, 
and would allow no intrusion of the abstract intelligence to 
correct its simple verdict. He needed no telescope to tell 
him that Orion and the Pleiades are far off and unimportant. 
What he wanted, rather, was a microscope Wherewith to go 
over every inch of Concord township. 

Concord itself was a two-foot measuring rod, as he knew 
well enough, but he held it up at arm's length against Babylon 
and Rome and dwarfed them to a speck. Thoreau was the 
philosopher, the loudest-lunged champion of the little town, 
and also its masterpiece. He was the apotheosis of the 
provincial. He returned from the forests of Maine to Box- 
boro Wood, from the White Mountains to Nawshawtuct, 
and from the ocean to Walden Pond, always more content 
with the scenes which his infancy knew. His patriotism, 
often impugned, was of that focussed and localized kind now 
almost forgotten in America; and it was perhaps the more 
intense for being somewhat restringent. All his triangulations 
were calculated with the main street of his village as a base ; 
the centre of all his circles was just the village spire. This 
meant, at the least, that in the midst of a nomadic 
and deracinated generation Thoreau had a centre and that 
his triangulations had one fixed and certain term. A less 
fortunate result of his provincialism is seen in the fact that, 
living in an intensely political generation, he had, until near 
the end of his life, only few and faint political interests. 
"What is called politics," he says, "is comparatively so 
superficial and inhuman that practically I have never fairly 
recognized that it concerns me at all." At the very time 
when all foreign travellers in the United States were exclaiming 
at our mania for news, he delivered his powerful philippic 
against the newspaper in the hardest-hitting of his essays, 
Life Without Principle. Thoreau had to learn, however, 
that no man can afford to neglect the Times in favor of the 
Eternities, for the good reason that there is no clear division 
between the two. So long as the influence of slavery came 
no nearer than Boston, he was not much concerned; for 
Boston, fifteen miles away, had always been a foreign city 



INTRODUCTION xi 

to him, concerning which he was cheerfully prepared to believe 
the worst. (He almost embraced the old man he found in 
Concord who had never been there.) But when he saw that 
his owTi town could not escape the slimy coils of this evil 
thing, he was instantly on the alert. Nothing Concordian 
was alien to him, whether it happened in Main Street or 
in Texas, at Walden Pond or in Central Africa. He was 
sensitive enough to all that touched that central nerve. 
His two passionate speeches on Civil Disobedience and Slavery 
in Massachusetts are political enough for any taste. They 
reveal a mind suddenly made aware that no little town 
liveth unto itself alone, but they illustrate at the same time 
a phase of patriotic feeling in comparison with which our 
present federalism and our incipient internationalism are 
in their infancy. In those speeches, he still appealed to the 
ancient ideals of town government as axiomatic. It is 
worthy of note, also, that when he went to jail rather than 
pay a small tax to the national government which he thought 
was supporting slavery, he cheerfully paid a larger tax for the 
maintenance of town roads. 

Thoreau's enduring love of place — that sentiment from 
which all patriotism springs and circles outward — explains 
more of him than at first appears. He read history and 
politics, Plato and Pliny, Gilbert White and WilHam Gilpin, 
in the light of Concord. His desire to make a complete 
inventory of the town's resources was possibly antecedent 
even to that passion for nature by which he is chiefly known, 
and this may be the reason why he ''spoke of Nature as 
though she had been born and brought up in Concord." 
His provincialism was something more than whim. It 
had elements of wisdom. Concord was a small enough part 
of the world so that one might hope to learn something about 
it m a lifetime ; but it was typical of all the rest. The man 
who had studied religion in its meeting-house, law in its 
town hall, commerce on the Musketaquid, trade on Main 
Street, and society — far too much of society — in its every 
lane and road, had not a great deal to learn from wider 
travels. He had seen the elements. The great world could 
offer him nothing but empty repetition. The story is well- 
known that Thoreau returned a book on Arctic exploration 
with the comment that most of the phenomena therein 
noted might be observed in Concord. He might have 



Xll 



INTRODUCTION 



returned a copy of Adam Smith or of Shakespeare with the 
same remark. 

Thoreau is one of the few American writers who have had 
a strong sense of the "spirit of place." It is this, in no small 
degree, which has made him a classic and which will pre- 
serve some part of his writings as TJie Natural History and 
Antiquities of Selborne, Our Village, Cranford, Dreamthorpe, 
and a dozen other celebrations of insignificant English towns, 
have been preserved. The place itself may be as dull in 
outward appearance as Drumtochty, for the enthusiasm 
of its lover is all. Thoreau had enthusiasm. "I think 
I could write a poem to be called Concord," he says. "For 
argument I have the River, the Woods, the Ponds, the Hills, 
the Fields, the Swamps and Meadows, the Streets and 
Buildings, and the Villagers." Well, his various books are 
the rough notes, at least, for such a poem. He begs his 
friend Ricketson, who is writing a history of New Bedford, 
to "let it be a local and villageous book. That is the good 
old-fashioned way of writing, as if you actually lived where 
you wrote." Working on this sound theory, Thoreau him- 
self often makes us hear almost the very throb of his pulse, 
as in the following note from his journal: "I am living 
this 27*^ of June, 1847, — a dull cloudy day and no sun 
shining. The clink of the smith's hammer sounds feebly 
over the roofs, and the wind is sighing gently as if dreaming 
of cheerfuler days. The farmer is plowing in yonder fields, 
craftsmen are busy in the shops, the trader stands up in the 
counter, and all works go steadily forward." Is there not 
a startling actuality in these words, as though the dead man 
were whispering in one's ear? Such sentences, like a few 
in Samuel Pepys, seem to crumple time and space. 

To some readers, Thoreau's boastful provincialism and 
his professed contempt for travel may seem a mere crying 
of sour grapes. From James Russell Lowell's essay on 
Thoreau — which some one has called, a bit too harshly, 
"the work of an extraordinarily brilliant snob" — one gets 
the idea that the man's limitations were first imposed upon 
him and then glorified by his egotism. This is the view, 
plausible enough in Boston, which assumes that all men 
really want the same things and that every man must be 
bitterly chagrined who does not get these things. But this 
has never been the Concord view, and it was not Thoreau's. 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

"It takes a man of genius/' he says, "to travel in his own 
country, in his native village, — to make progress between 
his door and his gate. But such a traveller will make the 
distances which Hanno and Marco Polo and Cook and 
Ledyard went over seem ridiculous." It is always thus, 
with a courageous and admiring eye upon his own limitations, 
that he makes them shine with the lustre of peculiar advan- 
tages. There is nothing in Fate's quiver that can harm such 
a man. 

No one need hope to understand Thoreau who does not 
see that his limitations were, for the most part, self-imposed. 
How cheerfully, at all events, he speaks of them! "The 
old coat that I wear is Concord," he writes to a friend. "It 
is my morning robe and study gown, my working dress and 
suit of ceremony. And it will be my nightgown after all." 
These are not the words of a man who would immediately 
rush off to Europe if the sinews of travel were provided. 
Neither are they the words of a man who can be fairly charac- 
terized by any amount of talk about his "wildness." There 
is more suggestion of the fence than of the forest in Thoreau's 
devotion to Concord, and any one who could love so fondly 
a little town — surely the most human and humanizing of 
all things — must have had the germs, at least, of civilization 
in him. Thoreau was Concord in a human form, — Concord 
writing and talking and walking about, — and in the solipsism 
which fastened upon him in his later years he wrote : " These 
regular phenomena of the seasons get at last to be simply and 
plainly phenomena of my own life. . . . Almost I believe 
the Concord would not rise and overflow its banks, were I not 
here." The same note is struck in the lines written many 
years before: 

"I was born on thy bank, river, 
My blood flows in thy stream, 
And thou meanderest forever 
At the bottom of my dream." 

With such passages in mind, one sees that the trip down the 
Musketaquid which this book records was only an episode 
in that ceaseless exploration of his own soul, that voyage of 
self-discovery, on which Thoreau was always inward bound. 
I have insisted upon Thoreau's devotion to this one little 
plot of earth not merely because his intensely localized sort 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

of patriotism is now so rare among us, not merely because 
we must all somehow manage to relearn it if our national 
patriotism is to have a firm enduring basis, but because it 
seems to have been the source, as it is certainly the clearest 
explanation, of qualities otherwise difficult to understand in 
his character, in his thought, in his style. Perhaps its full 
implications have not been drawn out. His greatest delight 
and genius lay, as I have said, in making a little go a great 
way, by a sort of inspired parsimony. In his lucid intervals, 
which were frequent enough, he must have seen that Concord 
was not in fact exceptionally favored by the gods. "But 
what a faculty must that be," says he, "which can paint 
the most barren landscape and humblest life in glorious 
colors. It is pure envigorated senses reacting on a sound 
and strong imagination. Is not that the poet's case?" 
Precisely. And was it not his own? The less there was of 
promise in his raw material, the greater was the challenge 
to the artist's passion in him, to that passion which always 
strives to achieve the maximum result with the minimum 
of means. If the wireless message came weak and blurred, 
there was no help for it but to have a better receiving instru- 
ment, and he set himself to such a severe ascetic training 
that he could at last catch the divine words out of the clouds 
anywhere and at any time, however faint and dim. All of 
his faculties became delicacies, as Stevenson says, so that 
he could write: "I am startled that God can make me so 
rich even with my own poor stores. It needs but a wisp of 
straw in the sun, or some small word dropped, or that has 
lain long silent in some book." He had willingly taken 
Poverty to wife, and part of what she taught him may be 
learned from these words, perhaps the most memorable that 
he ever penned: "If the day and night are such that you 
greet them with joy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers 
and sweet-scented herbs, is more elastic, more starry, more 
immortal — that is your success." 

Probably there is no better illustration of Thoreau's inborn 
and consciously developed faculty of making much of little 
than that of his extreme sensitiveness to sound. The delicacy 
of his senses of smell and taste suggest a sort of Spartan 
Keats, and his eyesight was probably keener than the average ; 
but his hearing was phenomenal. Much of his joy in life 
came to him on the waves of sound, but out of what almost 



INTRODUCTION xv 

pathetically simple elements that pleasure was woven! 
The whistle of a locomotive at night, the barking of dogs 
and crowing of cocks in the distance, his brother's flute half 
a mile away, an accordeon wheezing in a neighboring field, 
the falling of a tree — these things woke him to ecstasy. He 
walked miles to hear telegraph wires humming in the wind, 
and was filled with gratitude for the sweetness of his life 
when Sophia Hawthorne lent him a music-box. It might 
almost seem that he asked so little of life because his tight- 
strung nerves and dew-clear senses would not endure more 
than he had. To the man who is swept into the seventh 
heaven by the blast of a horn in the hands of a tyro, the severest 
string quartette would be a debauch, and he might not sur- 
vive a Wagnerian opera. 

Closely connected with this faculty of making much of 
little is that persistent trick of Thoreau's style which 
amounted almost to a vice, — the likening of great things 
to small and of small to great. It is not fanciful, therefore, 
to attribute even his habitual exaggeration to the influence 
of his Concord life. If you live in a microcosm, you will have 
to exaggerate enormously in order to make others see what 
it means to you. If you go forth to survey the universe 
with a two-foot rod, you will have to use it as though it were 
a slide-rule. It is by means of this faculty or disease, call 
it which one will, of crowding much riches into little room, 
that Thoreau became not a town-clerk or fence-viewer but 
a poet and philosopher. The minute changes of scene 
noticeable in dropping down the Musketaquid from Concord 
to Lowell were to him as a panorama of foreign lands. He 
speaks of the men of Bedford and Billerica, two or three miles 
over the hills from where he sits writing, as of strange and 
unaccountable dwellers in Ultima Thule. Pits dug by 
charcoal burners in the woods remind him of the ruins of 
Etruria. Thus he gets his romantic distance, both of time 
and space, on remarkably cheap terms. The results of this 
magnifying habit of mind sometimes border the grotesque, 
as where he speaks of the "upper slopes of the chestnut," 
compares distant lightning to the veins in the eye, or tells 
of the raindrop which struck the right slope of his nose and 
ran down the ravine there, and then remarks "Such is the 
origin of rivers." It was to such things as this that Lowell 
referred when he said that Thoreau had "revived the age 



xvi INTRODUCTION 

of the concetti.'^ But this is the source, too, of some of his 
best things. He often gives the reader by this means not 
only the shock of surprise which comes from the sudden 
revelation of unsuspected likenesses, but effects of rare 
beauty as well. What he can do in this way is shown by 
the passage in which he says : "Ever and anon the hghtning 
filled the damp air with light, like some vast glow-worm in 
the fields of ether, opening its wings " — a simile which it 
would be hard to better, except for the negligible detail that 
the glow-worm has no wings. 

These qualities, then, of Thoreau's mind and writing — his 
economy of means, his tendency to see great things in small, 
his exaggeration — may be referred with some confidence 
to his life-long residence in a little town which was to him 
a tiny simulacrum of the great world — a microcosm. Thus 
far, however, nothing has been made of the fact that this 
little town was inhabited by human beings. And it is still 
the fairly general impression that Thoreau himself made next 
to notliing of that fact. The opinion will not down that he 
was a morose and misanthropic solitary, interested in birds, 
fishes, plants, even Indians, but not in his fellow citizens. 
I have been told by a native of Concord who now lives next 
door to the house in which Thoreau died, that ''he was a 
smart man, no doubt, but queer, and lived nearly all his life 
at Walden Pond." The fact is, as stated in the first para- 
graph of Walden, that he lived there two years and two 
months. Mr. John Burroughs, in his essay on "Thoreau's 
Wildness," says that he appears to have been as stoical and 
indifferent and unsympathetic as a veritable Indian. Stoical 
he certainly was, and, at least outwardly, unsympathetic. 
How curiously unfeeling he could seem is shown in a letter to 
Emerson, then in England, in which he says that little 
Edward Emerson had remarked one night when going to 
bed, "If Waldo were here, then there would be four of us 
going up-stairs." The pang which those innocently intended 
words must have caused the distant father will be appreciated 
by all who have felt the nearly intolerable pathos of the 
'"Threnody" for this same Waldo, and by those who know that 
iilmost the last words spoken on Emerson's death-bed fifty 
years later were, "0 that beautiful boy." To take another 
instance, in that journal in which Thoreau wrote down an 
account of every walk he took and of every new tree or 



INTRODUCTION xvii 

flower or insect which he found there is not a word about the 
death of his brother John, whom he certainly had loved more 
than any other human being. The event is marked only by 
the fact that, whereas the entries before and after are made 
at intervals of two or three days, there is here a gap of five 
weeks. But it is elsewhere on record that Thoreau himself 
nearly died of grief at the time of his brother's death and 
that the event was never mentioned by members of the 
family in liis presence. Clearly, there is no evidence here 
of an unfeeling nature, for this is one of those silences which are 
more eloquent than many words. May it not be that those 
who have thought Thoreau indifferent and unsympathetic 
have failed to interpret his silences correctly? "The flowing 
of the sap under the dull rind of trees," he wrote, ''is a tide 
which few suspect." He seems to have regarded grief as 
a spiritual disease, for he did not find it in nature, and he 
once said that we should speak and act only out of our health, 
or out of that grain of health which we have left. 

The opinion that Thoreau was indifferent in matters of 
human relationship will not stand against the almost unani- 
mous testimony of those who knew him best — and it is 
worthy of notice that he had throughout his life an unusual 
number of intimate friends. This opinion is staggered by 
his essays on Friendship and on Love, in comparison with 
which those of Emerson on the same topics seem cold and 
formal. Such an opinion becomes almost grotesque in the 
light of certain of his letters, — say those to Mrs. Lydian 
Emerson. For one human relationship, however, — although 
here too we should remember that there is no argument from 
silence — he seems to have had no instinct. ''I have had 
a tragic correspondence," he writes to Emerson, "for the 

most part all on one side, with Miss . She did really 

wish to — I hesitate to write it — marry me. That is the 
way they spell it. Of course I did not write a deliberate 
answer. How could I deliberate upon it? I sent back as 
distinct a no as I have learned to pronounce after considerable 
practice, and I trust that this no has succeeded. Indeed, 
I wished that it might burst, like hollow shot, after it had 
struck and buried itself and made itself felt there. There 
was no other way. 1 reaUy had anticipated no such foe as 
this in my career." 

The source of Thoreau's undeniable and chronic irritation 



xviii INTRODUCTION 

against mankind was not misanthropy, and it was not even 
his hyper-sensitive egoism, so much as the fact that he had 
hoped more from human nature than it could give, habitually 
forgetting our frame that we are dust. Ten miles down the 
river, with not a house in sight, he could think most lovingly 
of his fellows. Sitting alone in his chamber, he could write 
letters glowing with affection. But in the parlor at Emerson's 
house the demon of negation so ruled his members that even 
the clear-sighted and loving-hearted master of that house 
once said, with well-nigh paternal forbearance, "Henry is 
with difficulty sweet." The ideal motto for Thoreau would 
have been Noli me tangere. Both for better and worse, he 
never learned to say ''Yes." 

Toward the great world outside of Concord and the whole 
question of his social duty, also, Thoreau seemed indifferent, 
but was not. ''I must confess," he says, "that I have felt 
mean enough when asked how I was to act upon society, 
what errand I had to mankind. Undoubtedly I did not feel 
mean without a reason, and yet my loitering is not without 
defence. I would fain communicate the wealth of my life 
to men, would really give them what is precious in my gift." 
It is well to remember in this connection that Thoreau had 
been one of that breathless audience which heard Emerson's 
address on the American Scholar at Harvard in the year of 
Thoreau's graduation, — had been one of those young men 
who listened "as if a prophet had been proclaiming to them 
'Thus saith the Lord,' " and who resolved that they too should 
be, in the noble phrase of the speaker, "delegated minds." 
No man who went from that room, not even the speaker him- 
self, adhered more closely in later life to the spirit and the 
letter of the address than did Thoreau. He really proposed 
to himself no less a task than to be "Man Thinking." While 
the merchants of Concord bought and sold, while the farmers 
plowed and reaped, he sat in the doorway of his cabin, think- 
ing. Diogenes in his tub personified no more exasperating 
challenge and rebuke. In that very place where, as it is 
written, a prophet is without honor, there Thoreau de- 
liberately sat down and stayed — "in his own country, and 
among his own kin, and in his own house." The moral 
courage, the hardening of purpose, the stiffening of character 
which this involved must be evident enough. Not ten men 
in America could have fully understood what he was about, 



INTRODUCTION xix 

and not even many women. Margaret Fuller damned his 
manuscripts with faint praise, Elizabfeth Hoar edged the 
scalpel of her wit upon him, the grocers of Concord sent 
him on errands. It was very hard to make clear to a world 
which had felt no need of such a thing that he was a "dele- 
gated mind." Such an explanation would have been 
calculated to make the neighbors stare. He made no ex- 
planations whatever, but went on thinking at the rate of a 
volume of journal notes per year, keeping in the midst of 
the crowd, although not with perfect sweetness, the inde- 
pendence of solitude. 

Even Emerson, who knew less about discipline than most 
great and good men, made it clear in the American Scholar 
Address that an arduous training is required of the delegated 
intellect. Thoreau's self-discipline was most severe and 
unremitting. Dowered by nature with instincts pure and 
ethereal almost to a fault, he held himself always at the top 
of his form. Sometimes he feared that he had even too fine 
an edge at last, and warned himself not to be "too moral." 
But in one phase of his preparation he saw no possibility of 
excess : he never felt that he could be too independent. He 
found the price of most things too high, but for freedom he 
would pay any price — even that of going to jail. "Do 
what you love," he writes to Harrison Blake. "Know your 
own bone ; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still." 
With the false emphasis common to all the progeny of Rous- 
seau, he erects the individual above society, constantly 
asking, in the words of Max Stirner: "Why will you not 
take courage now to make yourself the central point and the 
main thing altogether?" He liked to think himself the sole 
spectator for whom Nature's pictures were painted, and he 
would have understood the sharp twinge of jealousy with 
which Wordsworth always heard any other person make 
mention of mountains. If his neighbors had once obeyed 
his denunciatory exhortations and taken to living in the 
woods and fields, that, if anything, would have made him 
leave Concord. 

Two things must be done for Thoreau before he can take 
his due place as one of the three or four most original thinkers 
and men of letters America has produced. The first of these 
is to get him out of the Emersonian shadow. Superficial 



XX INTRODUCTION 

readers, learning that both the Concord writers were "tran- 
scendentaUsts " but that Emerson was in some vague way 
the leader of the school, remembering that Thoreau was 
Emerson's junior by fourteen years, that he lived for a time 
in Emerson's house and built his Walden cabin on Emerson's 
land, that in his youth he resembled Emerson even in voice 
and manner, draw the natural inference that Thoreau shone 
only with a lunar light. There is just enough truth in this 
inference to make its confutation difficult. We may bring 
evidence against it, however, from three different sources: 
from contemporaries of the two men who knew them both 
equally well, from Emerson himself, and from the writings 
of each. Moncure Conway, who should have known, says 
in his absorbing Autobiography that the resemblance of 
Thoreau to Emerson "was the more interesting because so 
superficial and unconscious. Thoreau was an imitator of 
no mortal ; but Emerson had long been a part of the very 
atmosphere of Concord, and it was as if this element had 
deposited on Thoreau a sort of mystical moss." Emerson 
wi'ites, a year after Thoreau's death: "In reading Henry 
Thoreau's journal, I am very sensible of the vigor of his 
constitution. ... He has muscle, and ventures on and 
performs tasks which I am forced to decline. In reading 
him, I find the same thought, the same spirit which is in me, 
but he takes a step beyond and illustrates by excellent images 
that which I should have conveyed in a sleepy generalization." 
Turning to the writings, one finds, amid much similarity in 
both thought and expression which is easily explicable as 
the result of common influences playing upon both men, 
a difference in pliilosophy which is radical and wide-spreading. 
This difference may be illustrated by parallel quotations 
dealing with the fundamental question of the reliance to be 
placed upon spontaneous instinct. "Trust the instinct 
to the end," says Emerson, "though you can render no 
reason." This is strongly countered by Thoreau's sentence : 
"Man's life consists not in his obedience, but in his opposition 
to his instincts." Says Emerson: "Place yourself in the 
middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates 
all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to 
truth, to right, and a perfect contentment." Thoreau's 
word^ on the same general topic have not the look of servile 
imitation: "I cannot afford to relax discipline because God 



INTRODUCTION xxi 

is on my side, for He is on the side of discipline." It appears 
that Thoreau had moral muscle as well as mental and physical. 
He could not float with any stream. ^ As soon as he found a 
current he began to swim against it. He was chiefly re- 
markable among the Concord philosophers for the fact that 
he lived his philosophy. "To be a philosopher/' he says, 
voicing a truth which has been largely forgotten since the 
time of Socrates, " is to solve some of the problems of life not 
only theoretically but practically." That was a most 
significant as well as a most amusing scene which was enacted 
one morning at Concord Jail, in which Thoreau had spent 
the night after refusing to pay his poll-tax. Deeply shocked 
and grieved, Emerson peered through the bars and said: 
"Henry, why are you here?" Instantly came back the 
Yankee reply: "Waldo, why are you not here?" 

It is a little hard to do full justice to Thoreau without some 
appearance of injustice to the man who was unquestionably, 
in almost all respects, his superior. If it seems that Thoreau 
was a somewhat better exemplar of Emersonianism than 
Emerson was himself, that may be due to the fact that he 
travelled with lighter luggage. The simple fact is that 
Emerson rendered Thoreau the highest service any teacher 
can give by setting the young man free — to go his own way. 
For this, and for the life-long stimulus of Emerson's presence, 
Thoreau gave his friend that loving reverence which all men 
gave and which was inevitable. "One needs must love the 
highest when he sees it." 

The second thing that must be done for Thoreau is to make 
it clear once and for all that he was not a naturalist, that he 
did not regard himself as such, that he did not even wish to 
be one. It can be shown that he actually feared lest the 
scientist in him might starve out the poet, lest the fences 
might overcome the forest. "I fear," he says, "that my 
knowledge is from year to year becoming more exact and 
scientific; that, in exchange for views as wide as heaven's 
cope, I am being narrowed down to the microscope." There 
is nothing here of that self-immolating devotion of the nine- 
teenth century scientist which enabled Charles Darwin to sit 
quietly by and watch the slow atrophy of one whole side of 
his nature. Neither is there anything resembling the method 
of the modern scientist in Thoreau's choice of field. He was 
interested about equally, it seems, in birds and fishes, turtles 



xxii INTRODUCTION 

and lichens, flowers and rocks, weather and ants, mountains 
and mice. The very range of his study, most of which was 
necessarily superficial, shows that his heart was not in that 
patient accumulation of fact by which science was in his 
time plodding toward its distant unknown goal. He would 
be more in sympathy with the biology of our own day, which 
more and more neglects the description and classification of 
species for the quest of ultimate laws and principles. The 
impulse which actuated his study was less scientific than 
religious. It was his constant effort to press on, chiefly by 
the way of intuition, to the final Mystery of things, to the 
innermost Holy of Holies. In going about the woods and 
fields on this errand, he picked up large stores of information 
and misinformation concerning matters to which scarcely 
any one in America had paid any attention. It was natural 
enough that his woodcraft and his powers of observation 
should be exaggerated by the bookish persons about him who 
had neither the one nor the other and that in this way a 
legend should grow about his name which could not sustain 
the attacks even of those who have followed precisely the 
trails which he blazed. His instruments were few and poor, 
he had few guides and no American competitors, and he had 
never known what we now understand by scientific training. 
The result has been no little innocent amusement to profes- 
sional and amateur scientists in correcting his many blunders 
and wondering that he did not know this and that. But it 
is a straw man that they attack. The real Thoreau wrote 
in his journal: "Man cannot afford to be a naturalist, to 
look at Nature directly, but only with the side of his eye. 
He must look through and beyond her." Doubtless he would 
have been very glad to have solved the mystery of his "night- 
warbler," but once he had done so he would have moved on 
at once into some other parish of the Infinite. One can 
imagine him smiling benignly at the ladies and gentlemen 
who scramble through thicket and swamp, opera-glass in 
hand, and complacently set down in their field-books at the 
end of a weary chase, ^'Siurus auricapillus, unknown to 
Thoreau." One can almost hear him murmur those help- 
ful words of his friend's: "When me they fly, I am the 
wings." 

But if Thoreau was not a naturalist, then what was he? 
He was a practical philosopher, constantly asking and trying 



INTRODUCTION xxiii 

to answer the most important question of all : how to live. 
With this question always foremost in mind he studied 
nature, books, and men. It is undeniable that he paid a 
somewhat disproportionate amount of attention to the first 
two of these sources of knowledge, but at least it may be said 
that he knew the truth that "the proper study of mankind 
is man." He reminds himself that it is "narrow to be 
confined to woods and fields" and that "the wisest will still 
be related to men." And when he turned upon the human 
animal those eyes which had been trained in watching wood- 
chucks and dormice, he could see a man to the quick with 
his searching sidelong gaze. Witness his many character 
sketches, which carry one about as far toward the final truth 
of human nature as cold intellect can ever go in that direction, 
and also his admirable literary criticism, which still awaits 
an adequate appraisal. He can give you the town drunkard 
or Thomas Carlyle with the same ease and certainty, stripping 
off all the husk of affectation and accidental circumstance until 
the essential man stands before you as in himself he really 
was. Thoreau's critical method was learned in the fields. 
The change from plants to human beings does not in the least 
affect his imperturbable sang-froid, and he still stands with 
his subject impaled as it were on a pin, his magnifying lens 
in hand, peeping and botanizing. 

Concerning a practical philosopher one always feels im- 
pelled to ask whether his own life was a success — that is, 
whether he achieved happiness, in the best and highest sense 
of the word. What did it all come to in the end, this experi- 
ment of Thoreau's in vigorous independence and intensive 
self-culture, these forty-five years of devotion to lofty ideals, 
of high thinking, of living "as delicately as one plucks a 
flower"? He gave up for happiness nearly all that other 
men cared for — wealth, fame, ease, and pleasure. The 
crucial question is : was he happy ? Now, although he 
asserts that he was so with almost damnable iteration, one 
cannot finally stifle a doubt. It would be easier to take him 
at his word if his tone were less robustious and if the high 
color which he always wears were more certainly the glow 
of health. It seems, then, that he may have 

"faltered more or less 
In his great task of happiness," 



xxiv INTRODUCTION 

although he never made the grievous mistake of Carlyle in 
asserting that happiness was none of his business. He often 
felt the rare joy of mere passive being, he had his ecstatic 
moments and his hours of transfiguration, but one fears that 
he seldom knew the sober and durable happiness that comes 
of pulling one's full weight in the world's united effort. 
Moreover, he was a reformer without a programme, a wor- 
shipper of the deed who never began to act. Here, one should 
say, is a formula for misery. But when we conclude that 
a given man, under all his circumstances, cannot be anything 
but miserable, we are likely to overlook the prevalence of 
hope. As a matter of fact, Thoreau came near to a steady 
radiance of joy by means of his inveterate, invincible expec- 
tation of better things. He always felt it possible that to- 
morrow's dawn might broaden over Paradise, and all that 
be ever said of the actual grovelling of men is atoned for by 
his hopes of what men might become. He wrote to a friend : 
''We always seem to be living just on the verge of a pure and 
lofty intercourse, which would make the ills and trivialities 
of life ridiculous. After each little interval, though it be 
but for a night, we are prepared to meet each other as gods 
and goddesses." He loved to think that the life in us, like 
the water in the river, might rise higher this year than ever 
before, and drown out all the musk-rats. "Give me the old 
familiar walk," says he, ''post-office and all — and this ever 
new self, this infinite expectation and faith which does not 
know when it is beaten." With this one weapon of hope he 
fended off unweariedly "that defeat which the present always 
seems," and it was only this which made him able to say that 
he loved his fate "to the very core and rind." 

Thoreau was ever on the lookout for better bread than is 
made of good wheat flour, having in his mind's eye some 
Platonic loaf which had soured, for him, all others. His 
mature life was lived in a never quite disillusioned memory 
of his boyhood's dreams, — in a constant effort to attain 
and retain their pristine purity and wonder, to realize their 
promises. "In youth," says he, "before I lost sortie of my 
senses, I can remember that I was all alive, and inhabited 
my body with inexpressible satisfaction. This earth ^ was 
the most glorious musical instrument, and I was audience 
to its strains. For years I marched to music in coniparison 
with which the military music in the streets is noise and 



INTRODUCTION xxv 

discord. I was daily intoxicated, and yet no man could call 
me intemperate. With all your science, can you tell us how 
it is and whence it is that light comes into the soul?'^ 

In reading these words, one may think that he sees some 
way into the heart of Thoreau's mystery. Here, perhaps, 
we have the clew to the famous ''Horse and Hound" passage 
which has mystified so many. There is nothing unusual 
in the experience except the clear realization, the lasting 
memory, and the expression of it — and it has been as clearly 
remembered, realized, and expressed by both Wordsworth 
and Henry Vaughan. Thoreau was ill at ease with others 
because he could not discover that they had such memories 
as his, and with himself because he could not 

"wander back 
And tread again that ancient track . . . 
From which th' enlightened spirit sees 
That shady city of palm trees." 

But at least it may be said that he was never recreant to the 
vision. 

Thoreau somewhere says that there are "two classes of 
authors : the one write histories of their times and the other 
their biography." His own writings belong unmistakably 
to the second class, for they are entirely woven out of his 
own life. Yet he was probably reminded by his delicate 
critical perception, as Stevenson says, that the true business 
of literature is with narration, and so "mingled his thoughts 
with the record of experience." This is the method of the 
only two books which he prepared for the press and published 
in his life-time, Walden and the Week. Often it is a very 
slender thread of events upon which he strings his medi- 
tations, and one frequently is made to wish that he had kept 
in mind the wisdom of his own remark : "All fables, indeed, 
have their morals, but the innocent enjoy the story." In its 
general lack of intelligible form, the Week resembles one of 
those efforts at carpentry which Alcott was so fond of making 
and Thoreau of ridiculing. It starts out, indeed, with a 
brave show of system and clarity, taking its chapter headings 
from the days of the week; but at this point the system 
breaks down and is no more seen. The unity of the book is 
like that of the Divina Commedia, consisting entirely in the 



xxvi INTRODUCTION 

fact that the author goes with us the whole way in propria 
persona. The book winds as sinuous and irresponsible a 
course as the Musketaquid itself, and with as slow a current. 
It narrows to passages of confidential chat about the author's 
personal prejudices and then opens suddenly out into serene 
reaches of Hindu philosophy, so that one can no more know 
on turning the page what topic will next be proposed than he 
can foretell on the actual stream what landscape will meet 
his eye when his canoe has rounded the next bend. In short, 
it is a multitudinous, haphazard, spontaneous, rivery sort 
of book, as it should be. Embedded in it are several complete 
and independent essays, forty-eight original poems — enough 
to make a separate volume in these degenerate days — and 
three hundred quotations from one hundred different authors. 
Alcott spoke with no more than his accustomed exaggeration 
when he described the book as ''Virgil and White of Selborne 
and Izaak Walton and Yankee settler all in one." Here, 
then, is "God's plenty." On the whole, this first of Thoreau's 
books may be considered his best. It is less contentious and 
is written with more youthful gusto than Walden. It has 
more continuity than Excursions, which contains some of 
the best of his detached pieces, or any of the books which 
have been made out of his journals. Thoreau himself said 
of it : "I trust it does not smell so much of the study and 
library, even of the poet's attic, as of the jfields and woods." 
That Thoreau paid for the publication of the book after 
hawking it about in Boston and New York, that it did not 
sell, that a large part of the edition was returned to him 
after some years, so that he could write: "I have now a 
library of nearly nine hundred volumes, most of which I 
wrote myself" — these are matters which in no way affect 
its value. Ten years elapsed between the trip and the 
publication of its record in 1849, during which time it was 
revised and expanded more than once. 

No one can hope to characterize Thoreau's style more 
neatly than Moncure Conway did in calling it "a sort of 
celestial homespun." Most of its merits and defects are 
those with which one is made familiar in the essays of Emer- 
son, who summed up the faults of his own writing by pointing 
out his "formidable tendency to the lapidary style . . . para- 
graphs incompressible, each sentence an infinitely repellent 
particle." The source of this fault in both writers is the 



INTRODUCTION xxvii 

same — journal writing. But both derive from the same 
source an amazing quantity and variety of homely metaphor 
dipped fresh each day from the waters of life streaming 
before their very doors, and it is chiefly this that raises their 
work out of homiletics into poetry. There are many differ- 
ences between the two styles, of course, — differences due to 
the immensely wider sweep of Emerson's mind, to its superior 
poise and calm, and to his lack of that spiritual vigor which 
he so much admired in his friend. Thoreau could not have 
achieved the serene elevation of the opening paragraphs in 
Emerson's second Nature essay, any more than he could 
have flashed the torch of imagination into the most obscure 
and secret caves of thought, as Emerson does in the earlier 
one. But when it is a question of powers and knowledge 
which may be acquired through devoted study and obser- 
vation, through mastery of fact, he is as clearly superior to 
Emerson as the latter is to him in those equalities which are 
the gifts of the gods. With all his skill, Emerson could not 
rival his pupil in the power to bring before his reader the 
actual forms of mountain and bird and tree, and, as Thoreau 
says, "a true account of the actual is the rarest poetry." 
There was more of Plato than of Pliny in the elder man. 
He could not have written such a thing as Thoreau's genial 
and witty paper on the Landlord, a familiar essay of the best 
type, of which Hazlitt or Stevenson would have been proud, 
— crisp, compact, without a suggestion of sprawl. It is 
abundantly evident that what Thoreau needed in order to 
write superlatively well was a definite subject. If he could 
have learned to leave alone such hazy topics as Friendship 
and Love, if his models had been not Hindu visionaries and 
Teutonizing Englishmen but the great French masters of 
style, if he could have made his sentences flow more like a 
river and less like a moraine of boulders, — then he might 
have been not only the great writer which he was but a good 
one as well. 

But it is perilous work prescribing for genius. Thoreau 
would go his own way and take his good where he found it. 
Such as he was, with all his faults and foibles upon him, this 
odd-chores-man of Concord, who carted most of the edition 
of his first book home in a wheel-barrow, looms higher year 
by year on the horizon of our literature, and is "still greater 
than the world suspects." In the rude boat that he has made 



xxviii INTRODUCTION 

with his own hands he drops quietly down the River of 
Commonplace which flows through our own tame little 
town, he doubles strange capes and cliffs which are after 
all only over the hill and brings back shining wares from the 
next township as though from foreign and almost fabulous 
lands. He keeps us in mind of the glory of the near and 
familiar. He shows us what can be done with even a two- 
foot measuring rod when it is carved on a walking-stick. 

Odell Shepard. 



A WEEK ON THE 

CONCORD AND MERRIMACK 

RIVERS 



CONCORD RIVER 

"Beneath low hills, in the broad interval 
Through which at will our Indian rivulet 
Winds mindful still of sannup and of squaw, 
Whose pipe and arrow oft the plough unburies, 
Here, in pine houses, built of new-fallen trees, 
Supplanters of the tribe, the farmers dwell." 

— Emerson. 

The Musketaquid, or Grass-ground River, though probably 
as old as the Nile or Euphrates, did not begin to have a place 
in civilized history, until the fame of its grassy meadows 
and its fish attracted settlers out of England in 1635, when it 
received the other but kindred name of Concord from the 
first plantation on its banks, which appears to have been 
commenced in a spirit of peace and harmony. It will be 
Grass-ground River as long as grass grows and water runs 
here ; it will be Concord River only while men lead peaceable 
lives on its banks. To an extinct race it was grass-ground, 
where they hunted and fished, and it is still perennial grass- 
ground to Concord farmers, who own the Great Meadows, 
and get the hay from year to year. ''One branch of it," ac- 
cording to the Historian of Concord, for I love to quote so good 
authority, "rises in the south part of Hopkinton, and another 
from a pond and a large cedar swamp in Westborough," and 
flowing between Hopkinton and Southborough, through 
Framingham, and between Sudbury and Wayland, where it 
is sometimes called Sudbury River, it enters Concord at the 
south part of the town, and after receiving the North or 

1 



2 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

Assabeth River, which has its source a little further to the 
north and west, goes out at the northeast angle, and flowing 
between Bedford, and Carlisle, and through Billerica, empties 
into the Merrimack at Lowell. In Concord it is, in summer, 
from four to fifteen feet deep, and from one hundred to three 
hundred feet wide, but in the spring freshets, when it over- 
flows its banks, it is in some places nearly a mile wide. Be- 
tween Sudbury and Wayland the meadows acquire their 
greatest breadth, and when covered with water, they form 
a handsome chain of shallow vernal lakes, resorted to by 
numerous gulls and ducks. Just above Sherman's Bridge, 
between these towns, is the largest expanse, and when the 
wind blows freshly in a raw March day, heaving up the 
surface into dark and sober billows or regular swells, skirted 
as it is in the distance with alder swamps and smoke-like 
maples, it looks like a smaller Lake Huron, and is very pleas- 
ant and exciting for a landsman to row or sail over. The 
farm-houses along the Sudbury shore, which rises gently to 
a considerable height, command fine water prospects at this 
season. The shore is more flat on the Wayland side, and this 
town is the greatest loser by the flood. Its farmers tell me 
that thousands of acres are flooded now, since the dams have 
been erected, where they remember to have seen the white 
honeysuckle or clover growing once, and they could go dry 
with shoes only in summer. Now there is nothing but blue- 
joint and sedge and cut-grass there, standing in water all 
the year round. For a long time, they made the most of 
the driest season to get their hay, working sometimes till 
nine o'clock at night, sedulously paring with their scythes 
in the twilight round the hummocks left by the ice; but 
now it is not worth the getting, when they can come at it, 
and they look sadly round to their wood-lots and upland as 
a last resource. 

It is worth the while to make a voyage up this stream, if 
you go no farther than Sudbury, only to see how much country 
there is in the rear of us ; great hills, and a hundred brooks, 
and farm-houses, and barns, and hay-stacks, you never saw 
before, and men everywhere ; Sudbury, that is Southhorough 
men, and Wayland, and Nine-Acre-Corner men, and Bound 
Rock, where four towns bound on a rock in the river, Lincoln, 
Wayland, Sudbury, Concord. Many waves are there agi- 
tated by the wind, keeping nature fresh, the spray blowing 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 3 

in your face, reeds and rushes waving ; ducks by the hundred, 
all uneasy in the s'urf, in the raw wind, just ready to rise, and 
now going off with a clatter and a whistling, like riggers 
straight for Labrador, flying against the stiff gale with reefed 
wings, or else circling round first, with all their paddles 
briskly moving, just over the surf, to reconnoitre you before 
they leave these parts; gulls wheeling overhead, muskrats 
swimming for dear life, wet and cold, with no fire to warm 
them by that you know of ; their labored homes rising here 
and there like hay-stacks; and countless mice and moles 
and winged titmice along the sunny, windy shore ; cranberries 
tossed on the waves and heaving up on the beach, their little 
red skiffs beating about among the alders ; — such healthy 
natural tumult as proves the last day is not yet at hand. 
And there stand all around the alders, and birches, and oaks, 
and maples full of glee and sap, holding in their buds until 
the waters subside. You shall perhaps run aground on Cran- 
berry Island, only some spires of last year's pipegrass above 
water, to show where the danger is, and get as good a freezing 
there as anywhere on the North-west Coast. I never voyaged 
so far in all my life. You shall see men you never heard of 
before, whose names you don't know, going away down 
through the meadows with long ducking guns, with water- 
tight boots, wading through the fowl-meadow grass, on bleak, 
wintry, distant shores, with guns at half cock ; and they shall 
see teal, blue-winged, green-winged, shelldrakes, whistlers, 
black ducks, ospreys, and many other wild and noble sights 
before night, such as they who sit in parlors never dream of. 
You shall see rude and sturdy, experienced and wise men, 
keeping their castles, or teaming up their summer's wood, 
or chopping alone in the woods, men fuller of talk and rare 
adventure in the sun and wind and rain, than a chestnut is 
of meat; who were out not only in '75 and 1812, but have 
been out every day of their lives ; greater men than Homer, 
or Chaucer, or Shakspeare, only they never got time to say 
so; they never took to the way of writing. Look at their 
fields, and imagine what they might write, if ever they should 
put pen to paper. Or what have they not written on the face 
of the earth already, clearing, and burning, and scratching, 
and harrowing, and plowing, and subsoiling, in and in, and 
out and out, and over and over, again and again, erasing 
what they had already written for want of parchment. 



4 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

As yesterday and the historical ages are past, as the work of 
to-day is present, so some flitting perspectives, and demi- 
experiences of the life that is in nature are in time veritably 
future, or rather outside to time, perennial, young, divine, 
in the wind and rain which never die. 

The respectable folks, — 

Where dwell they? 

They whisper in the oaks, 

And they sigh in the hay ; 

Summer and winter, night and day, 

Out on the meadow, there dwell they. 

They never die, 

Nor snivel, nor cry, 

Nor ask our pity 

With a wet eye. 

A sound estate they ever mend, 

To every asker readily lend ; 

To the ocean wealth, 

To the meadow health, 

To Time his length, 

To the rocks strength, 

To the stars hght, 

To the weary night, 

To the busy day. 

To the idle play ; 

And so their good cheer never ends, 

For all are their debtors, and all their friends. 

Concord River is remarkable for the gentleness of its cur- 
rent, which is scarcely perceptible, and some have referred 
to its influence the proverbial moderation of the inhabitants 
of Concord, as exhibited in the Revolution, and on later 
occasions. It has been proposed that the town should adopt 
for its coat of arms a field verdant, with the Concord circling 
nine times round. I have read that a descent of an eighth 
of an inch in a mile is sufficient to produce a flow. Our river 
has, probably, very near the smallest allowance. The story 
is current, at any rate, though I believe that strict history 
will not bear it out, that the only bridge ever carried away 
on the main branch, within the limits of the town, was driven 
up stream by the wind. But wherever it makes a sudden 
bend it is shallower and swifter, and asserts its title to be called 
a river. Compared with the other tributaries of the Merri- 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 5 

mack, it appears to have been properly named Musketaquid, 
or Meadow River, by the Indians. For the most part, it 
creeps through broad meadows, adorned with scattered oaks, 
where the cranberry is fomid in abundance, covering the 
ground like a mossbed. A row of sunken dwarf willows 
borders the stream on one or both sides, while at a greater 
distance the meadow is skirted with maples, alders, and other 
fluviatile trees, overrun with the grape vine, which bears 
fruit in its season, purple, red, white, and other grapes. 
Still further from the stream, on the edge of the firm land, 
are seen the gray and white dwellings of the inhabitants. 
According to the valuation of 1831, there were in Concord 
two thousand, one hundred and eleven acres, or about one- 
seventh of the whole territory, in meadow; this standing 
next in the list after pasturage and unimproved lands ; and, 
judging from the returns of previous years, the meadow is 
not reclaimed so fast as the woods are cleared. 

The sluggish artery of the Concord meadows steals thus 
unobserved through the town, without a murmur or a pulse- 
beat, its general course from south-west to north-east, and its 
length about fifty miles; a huge volume of matter, cease- 
lessly rolling through the plains and valleys of the substantial 
earth, with the moccasined tread of an Indian warrior, mak- 
ing haste from the high places of the earth to its ancient reser- 
voir. The murmurs of many a famous river on the other 
side of the globe reach even to us here, as to more distant 
dwellers on its banks ; many a poet's stream floating the 
helms and shields of heroes on its bosom. The Xanthus or 
Scamander is not a mere dry channel and bed of a mountain 
torrent, but fed by the ever-flowing springs of fame ; — 

"And thou Simois, that as an arrowe, clere 
Through Troy rennest, aie downward to the sea ;" — 



and I trust that I may be allowed to associate our muddy 
but much abused Concord River with the most famous in 
liistory. 

"Sure there are poets which did never dream 
Upon Parnassus, nor did taste the stream 
Of HeHcon ; we therefore may suppose 
Those made not poets, but the poets those." 



6 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

The Mississippi, the Ganges, and the Nile, those journey- 
ing atoms from the Rocky Mountains, the Himmaleh, and 
Mountains of the Moon, have a kind of personal importance 
in the annals of the world. The heavens are not yet drained 
over their sources, but the Mountains of the Moon still send 
their annual tribute to the Pasha without fail, as they did 
to the Pharaohs, though he must collect the rest of his revenue 
at the point of the sword. Rivers must have been the guides 
which conducted the footsteps of the first travellers. They 
are the constant lure, when they flow by our doors, to dis- 
tant enterprise and adventure, and, by a natural impulse, 
the dwellers on their banks will at length accompany their 
currents to the lowlands of the globe, or explore at their 
invitation the interior of continents. They are the natural 
highways of all nations, not only levelling the ground, and 
removing obstacles from the path of the traveller, quenching 
his thirst, and bearing him on their bosoms, but conducting 
him through the most interesting scenery, the most popu- 
lous portions of the globe, and where the animal and vege- 
table kingdoms attain their greatest perfection. 

I had often stood on the banks of the Concord, watching 
the lapse of the current, an emblem of all progress, following 
the same law with the system, with time, and all that is made ; 
the weeds at the bottom gently bending down the stream, 
shaken by the watery wind, still planted where their seeds 
had sunk, but ere long to die and go down likewise; the 
shining pebbles, not yet anxious to better their condition, the 
chips and weeds, and occasional logs and stems of trees, that 
floated past, fulfilling their fate, were objects of singular 
interest to me, and at last I resolved to launch myself on its 
bosom, and float whither it would bear me. 



SATURDAY 

"Come, come, my lovely fair, and let us try 
These rural deUcates." 

— Invitation to the Soul. Quarles. 

At length, on Saturday, the last day of August, 1839, 
we two, brothers, and natives of Concord, weighed anchor 
in this river port; for Concord, too, lies under the sun, a 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 7 

port of entry and departure for the bodies as well as the souls 
of men ; one shore at least exempted from all duties but such 
as an honest man will gladly discharge. A warm drizzling 
rain had obscured the morning, and threatened to delay 
our voyage, but at length the leaves and grass were dried, 
and it came out a mild afternoon, as serene and fresh as if 
nature were maturing some greater scheme of her own. After 
this long dripping and oozing from every pore, she began to 
respire again more healthily than ever. So with a vigorous 
shove we launched our boat from the bank, while the flags 
and bulrushes curtseyed a God-speed, and dropped silently 
down the stream. 

Our boat, which had cost us a week's labor in the spring, 
was in form like a fisherman's dory, fifteen feet long by three 
and a half in breadth at the widest part, painted green below, 
with a border of blue, with reference to the two elements 
in which it was to spend its existence. It had been loaded 
the evening before at our door, half a mile from the river, 
with potatoes and melons from a patch which we had culti- 
vated, and a few utensils, and was provided with wheels 
in order to be rolled around falls, as well as with two sets of 
oars, and several slender poles for shoving in shallow places, 
and also two masts, one of which served for a tent-pole at 
night; for a buffalo skin was to be our bed, and a tent of 
cotton cloth our roof. It was strongly built but heavy, and 
hardly of better model than usual. If rightly made, a boat 
would be a sort of amphibious animal, a creature of two ele- 
ments, related by one half its structure to some swift and 
shapely fish, and by the other to some strong-winged and 
graceful bird. The fish shows where there should be the 
greatest breadth of beam and depth in the hold; its fins 
direct where to set the oars, and the tail gives some hint for 
the form and position of the rudder. The bird shows how 
to rig and trim the sails, and what form to give to the prow 
that it may balance the boat and divide the air and water 
best. These hints we had but partially obeyed. But the 
eyes, though they are no sailors, will never be satisfied with 
any model, however fashionable, which does not answer all 
the requisitions of art. However, as art is all of a ship but 
the wood, and yet the wood alone will rudely serve the pur- 
pose of a ship, so our boat being of wood gladly availed itself 
of the old law that the heavier shall float the lighter, and 



8 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

though a dull water fowl, proved a sufficient buoy for our 
purpose. 

" Were it the will of Heaven, an osier bough 
Were vessel safe enough the seas to plow." 

Some village friends stood upon a promontory lower down 
the stream to wave us a last farewell ; but we, having already 
performed these shore rites with excusable reserve, as befits 
those who are embarked on unusual enterprises, who behold 
but speak not, silently glided past the firm lands of Concord, 
both peopled cape and lonely summer meadow, with steady 
sweeps. And yet we did unbend so far as to let our guns 
speak for us, when at length we had swept out of sight, and 
thus left the woods to ring again with their echoes ; and it 
may be many russet-clad children lurking in those broad mead- 
ows, with the bittern and the woodcock and the rail, though 
wholly concealed by brakes and hardback and meadow-sv/eet, 
heard our salute that afternoon. 

We were soon floating past the first regular battle ground 
of the Revolution, resting on our oars between the still visible 
abutments of that ''North Bridge," over which in April, 
1775, rolled the first faint tide of that war, which ceased not, 
till, as we read on the stone on our right, it "gave peace to 
these United States.'' As a Concord poet has sung, — 

"By the rude bridge that arched the flood. 
Their flag to April's breeze unfurled, 
Here once the embattled farmers stood. 
And fired the shot heard round the world. 

"The foe long since in silence slept ; 
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps ; 
And Time the ruined bridge has swept 
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps." 

Our reflections had already acquired a historical remote- 
ness from the scenes we had left, and we ourselves essayed to 
sing. 

Ah, 't is in vain the peaceful din 

That wakes the ignoble town, 
Not thus did braver spirits win 

A patriot's renown. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 9 

There is one field beside this stream, 

Wherein no foot does fall, 
But yet it beareth in my dream 

A richer crop than all. 

Let me believe a dream so dear, 

Some heart beat high that day, 
Above the petty Province here, 

And Britain far away ; 

Some hero of the ancient mould. 

Some arm of knightly worth, 
Of strength unbought, and faith unsold, 

Honored this spot of earth ; 

Who sought the prize his heart described, 

And did not ask release, 
Whose free born valor was not bribed 

By prospect of a peace. 

The men who stood on yonder height 

That day are long since gone ; 
Not the same hand directs the fight 

And monumental stone. 

Ye were the Grecian cities then. 

The Romes of modern birth. 
Where the New England husbandmen 

Have shown a Roman worth. 

In vain I search a foreign land, 

To find our Bunker Hill, 
And Lexington and Concord stand 

By no Laconian rill. 

With such thoughts we swept gently by this now peaceful 
pasture ground, on waves of Concord, in which was long 
since drowned the din of war. 

But since we sailed 
Some things have failed, 
And many a dream 
Gone down the stream. 

Here then an aged shepherd dwelt, 
Who to his flock his substance dealt. 



10 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

And ruled them with a vigorous crook, 
By precept of the sacred Book ; 
But he the pierless bridge passed o'er, 
And solitary left the shore. 

Anon a youthful pastor came, 
Whose crook was not unknown to fame, 
His lambs he viewed with gentle glance. 
Spread o'er the country's wide expanse, 
And fed with " Mosses from the Manse." 
Here was our Hawthorne in the dale, 
And here the shepherd told his tale. 

That slight shaft had now sunk behind the hills, and we 
had floated round the neighboring bend, and under the new 
North Bridge between Ponkawtasset and the Poplar Hill, 
into the Great Meadows, which, like a broad moccasin print, 
have levelled a fertile and juicy place in nature. 

On Ponkawtasset, since, with such delay, 
Down this still stream we took our meadowy way, 
A poet wise has settled, whose fine ray 
Doth faintly shine on Concord's twihght day. 

Like those first stars, whose silver beams on high, 
Shining more brightly as the day goes by. 
Most travellers cannot at first descry, 
But eyes that wont to range the evening sky. 

And know celestial lights, do plainly see, 
And gladly hail them, numbering two or three ; 
For lore that's deep must deeply studied be, 
As from deep wells men read star-poetry. 

These stars are never pal'd, though out of sight, 
But Uke the sun they shine forever bright ; 
Aye, they are suns, though earth must in its flight 
Put out its eyes that it may see their light. 

Who would neglect the least celestial sound. 
Or faintest light that falls on earthly ground, 
If he could know it one day would be found 
That star in Cygnus whither we are bound. 
And pale our sun with heavenly radiance round? 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 11 

Gradually the village murmur subsided, and we seemed 
to be embarked on the placid current of our dreams, floating 
from past to future as silently as one awakes to fresh morn- 
ing or evening thoughts. We glided noiselessly down the 
stream, occasionally driving a pickerel from the covert of 
the pads, or a bream from her nest, and the smaller bittern 
now and then sailed away on sluggish wings from some re- 
cess in the shore, or the larger lifted itself out of the long 
grass at our approach, and carried its precious legs away, 
to deposit them in a place of safety. The tortoises also 
rapidly dropped into the water, as our boat ruffled the sur- 
face amid the wiflows, breaking the reflections of the trees. 
The banks had passed the height of their beauty, and some 
of the brighter flowers showed by their faded tints that 
the season was verging towards the afternoon of the year; 
but this sombre tinge enhanced their sincerity, and in the 
stiU unabated heats they seemed like a mossy brink of some 
cool well. The narrow-leaved willow lay along the surface of 
the water in masses of light green foliage, interspersed with 
the large white balls of the button-bush. The rose-colored 
polygonum raised its head proudly above the water on either 
hand, and, flowering at this season, and in these localities, 
in the midst of dense fields of the white species which skirted 
the sides of the stream, its little streak of red looked very 
rare and precious. The pure white blossoms of the arrow- 
head stood in the shallower parts, and a few cardinals on 
the margin still proudly surveyed themselves reflected in 
the water, though the latter, as well as the pickerel-weed, 
was now nearly out of blossom. The snake-head, chelone 
glabra, grew close to the shore, while a kind of coreopsis, 
turning its brazen face to the sun, full and rank, and a tall 
dull red flower, eupatorium purpureum, or trumpet weed, 
formed the rear rank of the fluvial array. The bright blue 
flowers of the soap-wort gentian were sprinkled here and 
there in the adjacent meadows, like flowers which Proserpine 
had dropped, and still further in the fields, or higher on the 
bank, were seen the Virginian rhexia, and drooping neottia 
or ladies '-tresses ; while from the more distant waysides, 
which we occasionally passed, and banks where the sun had 
lodged, was reflected a dull yellow beam from the ranks of 
tansy, now in its prime. In short, nature seemed to have 
adorned herself for our departure with a profusion of fringes 



12 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

and curls, mingled with the bright tints of flowers, reflected 
in the water. But we missed the white water-lily, which is 
the queen of river flowers, its reign being over for this season. 
He makes his voyage too late, perhaps, by a true water clock 
who delays so long. Many of this species inhabit our Con- 
cord water. I have passed down the river before sunrise 
on a summer morning between fields of lilies still shut in 
sleep ; and when at length the flakes of sunlight from over 
the bank fell on the surface of the water, whole fields of white 
blossoms seemed to flash open before me, as I floated along, 
like the unfolding of a banner, so sensible is this flower to 
the influence of the sun's rays. 

As we were floating through the last of these familiar 
meadows, we observed the large and conspicuous flowers 
of the hibiscus, covering the dwarf willows, and mingled with 
the leaves of the grape, and wished that we could inform one 
of our friends behind of the locality of this somewhat rare 
and inaccessible flower before it was too late to pluck it; 
but we were just gliding out of sight of the village spire be- 
fore it occurred to us that the farmer in the adjacent meadow 
would go to church on the morrow, and would carry this 
news for us; and so by the Monday, while we should be 
floating on the Merrimack, our friend would be reaching to 
pluck this blossom on the bank of the Concord. 

After a pause at Ball's Hill, the St. Ann's of Concord 
voyageurs, not to say any prayer for the success of our 
voyage, but to gather the few berries which were still left on 
the hills, hanging by very slender threads, we weighed anchor 
again, and were soon out of sight of our native village. The 
land seemed to grow fairer as we withdrew from it. Far 
away to the south-west lay the quiet village, left alone under 
its elms and button-woods in mid afternoon ; and the hills, 
notwithstanding their blue, ethereal faces, seemed to cast a 
saddened eye on their old playfellows; but, turning short 
to the north, we bade adieu to their familiar outlines, and 
addressed ourselves to new scenes and adventures. Nought 
was familiar but the heavens, from under whose roof the 
voyageur never passes ; but with their countenance, and the 
acquaintance we had with river and wood, we trusted to fare 
well under any circumstances. 

From this point, the river runs perfectly straight for a 
mile or more to Carlisle Bridge, which consists of twenty 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 13 

wooden piers, and when we looked back over it, its surface 
was reduced to a line's breadth, and appeared like a cobweb 
gleaming in the sun. Here and there might be seen a pole 
sticking up, to mark the place where some fisherman had 
enjoyed unusual luck, and in return had consecrated his 
rod to the deities who preside over these shallows. It was 
full twice as broad as before, deep and tranquil, with a muddy 
bottom, and bordered with willows, beyond which spread 
broad lagoons covered with pads, bulrushes, and flags. 

Late in the afternoon we passed a man on the shore fish- 
ing with a long birch pole, its silvery bark left on, and a dog 
at his side, rowing so near as to agitate his cork with our 
oars, and drive away luck for a season ; and when we had 
rowed a mile as straight as an arrow, with our faces turned 
towards him, and the bubbles in our wake still visible on the 
tranquil surface, there stood the fisher still with his dog, 
like statues under the other side of the heavens, the only 
objects to relieve the eye in the extended meadow ; and there 
would he stand abiding his luck, till he took his way home 
through the fields at evening with his fish. Thus, by one 
bait or another. Nature allures inhabitants into all her re- 
cesses. This man was the last of our townsmen whom we 
saw, and we silently through him bade adieu to our friends. 

The characteristics and pursuits of various ages and races 
of men are always existing in epitome in every neighborhood. 
The pleasures of my earliest youth have become the inherit- 
ance of other men. This man is still a fisher, and belongs to 
an era in which I myself have lived. Perchance he is not 
confounded by many knowledges, and has not sought out 
many inventions, but how to take many fishes before the 
sun sets, with his slender birchen pole and flaxen line, that 
is invention enough for him. It is good even to be a fisher- 
man in summer and in winter. Some men are judges these 
August days, sitting on benches, even till the court rises; 
they sit judging there honorably, between the seasons and 
between meals, leading a civil politic life, arbitrating in the 
case of Spaulding versus Cummings, it may be, from highest 
noon till the red vesper sinks into the west. The fisherman, 
meanwhile, stands in three feet of water, under the same 
summer's sun, arbitrating in other cases between muckworm 
and shiner, amid the fragrance of water-lilies, mint, and 



14 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

pontederia, leading his life many rods from the dry land, 
within a pole's length of where the larger fishes swim. Hu- 
man life is to him very much like a river, 

— "renning aie downward to the sea." 

This was his observation. His honor made a great discovery 
in bailments. 

I can just remember an old brown-coated man who was 
the Walton of this stream, who had come over from New- 
castle, England, with his son, the latter a stout and hearty 
man who had lifted an anchor in his day. A straight old 
man he was who took his way in silence through the meadows, 
having passed the period of communication with his fellows ; 
his old experienced coat hanging long and straight and 
brown as the yellow pine bark, glittering with so much 
smothered sunlight, if you stood near enough, no work of 
art but naturalized at length. I often discovered him un- 
expectedly amid the pads and the gray willows when he 
moved, fishing in some old country method, — for youth 
and age then went a-fishing together, — full of incom- 
municable thoughts, perchance about his own Tyne and 
Northumberland. He was always to be seen in serene 
afternoons haunting the river, and almost rustling with the 
sedge ; so many sunny hours in an old man's life, entrapping 
silly fish, almost grown to be the sun's familiar ; what need 
had he of hat or raiment any, having served out his time, and 
seen through such thin disguises? I have seen how his 
coeval fates rewarded him with the yellow perch, and yet I 
thought his luck was not in proportion to his years ; and I 
have seen when, with slow steps and weighed down with 
aged thoughts, he disappeared with his fish under his low- 
roofed house on the skirts of the village. I think nobody 
else saw him ; nobody else remembers liim now, for he soon 
after died, and migrated to new Tyne streams. His fish- 
ing was not a sport, nor solely a means of subsistence, but a 
sort of solemn sacrament and withdrawal from the world, 
just as the aged read their bibles. 

Whether we live by the sea-side, or by the lakes and rivers, 
or on the prairie, it concerns us to attend to the nature of 
fishes, since they are not phenomena confined to certain 
localities only, but forms and phases of the life in nature 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 15 

universally dispersed. The countless shoals which annually 
coast the shores of Europe and America are not so interesting 
to the student of nature as the more fertile law itself, which 
deposits their spawn on the tops of mountains, and on the 
interior plains; the fish principle in nature, from which it 
results that they may be found in water in so many places, 
in greater or less numbers. The natural historian is not a 
fisherman, who prays for cloudy days and good luck merely, 
but as fishing has been styled "a contemplative man's recrea- 
tion," introducing him profitably to woods and water, so 
the fruit of the naturalist's observations is not in new genera 
or species, but in new contemplations still, and science is 
only a more contemplative man's recreation. The seeds of 
the life of fishes are everywhere disseminated, whether the 
winds waft them, or the waters float them, or the deep earth 
holds them ; wherever a pond is dug, straightway it is stocked 
with this vivacious race. They have a lease of nature, and 
it is not yet out. The Chinese are bribed to carry their ova 
from province to province in jars or in hollow reeds, or the 
water-birds to transport them to the mountain tarns and 
interior lakes. There are fishes wherever there is a fluid 
medium, and even in clouds and in melted metals we detect 
their semblance. Think how in winter you can sink a line 
down straight in a pasture through snow and through ice, 
and pull up a bright, slippery, dumb, subterranean silver or 
golden fish! It is curious, also, to reflect how they make 
one family, from the largest to the smallest. The least 
minnow, that lies on the ice as bait for pickerel, looks like 
a huge seafish cast up on the shore. In the waters of this 
town there are about a dozen distinct species, though the 
inexperienced would expect many more. 

It enhances our sense of the grand security and serenity 
of nature to observe the still undisturbed economy and 
content of the fishes of this century, their happiness a regular 
fruit of the summer. The fresh-water Sun Fish, Bream, or 
Ruff, Pomotis bulgaris, as it were, without ancestry, without 
posterity, still represents the Fresh Water Sun Fish in nature. 
It is the most common of all, and seen on every urchin's 
string; a simple and inoffensive fish, whose nests are visible 
all along the shore, hollowed in the sand, over which it is 
steadily poised through the summer hours on waving fin. 



16 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

Sometimes there are twenty or thirty nests in the space of a 
few rods, two feet wide by half a foot in depth, and made 
with no little labor, the weeds being removed, and the sand 
shoved up on the sides, like a bowl. Here it may be seen 
early in summer assiduously brooding, and driving away 
minnows and larger fishes, even its own species, which would 
disturb its ova, pursuing them a few feet, and circling round 
swiftly to its nest again : the minnows, like young sharks, 
instantly entering the empty nests meanwhile, and swallow- 
ing the spawn, which is attached to the weeds and to the 
bottom, on the sunny side. The spawn is exposed to so 
many dangers that a very small proportion can ever become 
fishes, for beside being the constant prey of birds and fishes, 
a great many nests are made so near the shore, in shallow 
water, that they are left dry in a few days, as the river goes 
down. These and the lamprey's are the only fishes' nests 
that I have observed, though the ova of some species may 
be seen floating on the surface. The breams are so careful 
of their charge that you may stand close by in the water and 
examine them at your leisure. I have thus stood over them 
half an hour at a time, and stroked them familiarly without 
frightening them, suffering them to nibble my fingers harm- 
lessly, and seen them erect their dorsal fins in anger when 
my hand approached their ova, and have even taken them 
gently out of the water with my hand ; though this cannot 
be accomplished by a sudden movement, however dexterous, 
for instant warning is conveyed to them through their denser 
element, but only by letting the fingers gradually close about 
them as they are poised over the palm, and with the utmost 
gentleness raising them slowly to the surface. Though 
stationary, they keep up a constant sculling or waving motion 
with their fins, which is exceedingly graceful, and expressive 
of their humble happiness; for unlike ours, the element in 
which they live is a stream which must be constantly resisted. 
From time to time they nibble the weeds at the bottom or 
overhanging their nests, or dart after a fly or a worm. The 
dorsal fin, besides answering the purpose of a keel, with the 
anal, serves to keep the fish upright, for in shallow water, 
where this is not covered, they fall on their sides. As you 
stand thus stooping over the bream in its nest, the edges of 
the dorsal and caudal fins have a singular dusty golden re- 
flection, and its eyes, which stand out from the head, are 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 17 

transparent and colorless. Seen in its native element, it is 
a very beautiful and compact fish, perfect in all its parts, 
and looks like a brilliant coin fresh from the mint. It is a 
perfect jewel of the river, the green, red, coppery, and golden 
reflections of its mottled sides being the concentration of 
such rays as struggle through the floating pads and flowers 
to the sandy bottom, and in harmony with the sunlit brown 
and yellow pebbles. Behind its watery shield it dwells far 
from many accidents inevitable to human life. 

There is also another species of bream found in our river, 
without the red spot on the operculum, which, according to 
M. Agassiz, is undescribed. 

The Common Perch, Percaflavescens, which name describes 
well the gleaming, golden reflections of its scales as it is drawn 
out of the water, its red gills standing out in vain in the thin 
element, is one of the handsomest and most regularly formed 
of our fishes, and at such a moment as this reminds us of the 
fish in the picture, which wished to be restored to its native 
element until it had grown larger ; and indeed most of this 
species that are caught are not half grown. In the ponds 
there is a light-colored and slender kind, which swim in 
shoals of many hundreds in the sunny water, in company 
with the shiner, averaging not more than six or seven inches 
in length, while only a few larger specimens are found in 
the deepest water, which prey upon their weaker brethren. 
I have often attracted these small perch to the shore at 
evening, by rippling the water with my fingers, and they may 
sometimes be caught while attempting to pass inside your 
hands. It is a tough and heedless fish, biting from impulse, 
without nibbling, and from impulse refraining to bite, and 
sculling indifferently past. It rather prefers the clear water 
and sandy bottoms, though here it has not much choice. 
It is a true fish, such as the angler loves to put into his basket 
or hang at the top of his willow twig, in shady afternoons 
along the banks of the stream. So many unquestionable 
fishes he counts, and so many shiners, which he counts and 
then throws away. 

The Chivin, Dace, Roach, Cousin Trout, or whatever else 
it is called, Leuciscus pulchellus, white and red, always an 
unexpected prize, which, however, any angler is glad to hook 
for its rarity. A name that reminds us of many an un- 
successful ramble by swift streams, when the wind rose to 



18 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

disappoint the fisher. It is commonly a silvery soft-scaled 
fish, of graceful, scholarlike, and classical look, like many a 
picture in an English book. It loves a swift current and a 
sandy bottom, and bites inadvertently, yet not without 
appetite for the bait. The minnows are used as bait for 
pickerel in the winter. The red chivin, according to some, 
is still the same fish, only older, or with its tints deepened as 
they think by the darker water it inhabits, as the red clouds 
swim in the twilight atmosphere. He who has not hooked 
the red chivin is not yet a complete angler. Other fishes, 
methinks, are slightly amphibious, but this is a denizen of 
the water wholly. The cork goes dancing down the swift- 
rushing stream, amid the weeds and sands, when suddenly, 
by a coincidence never to be remembered, emerges this 
fabulous inhabitant of another element, a thing heard of 
but not seen, as if it were the instant creation of an eddy, 
a true product of the running stream. And this bright 
cupreous dolphin was spawned and has passed its life be- 
neath the level of your feet in your native field. Fishes, 
too, as well as birds and clouds, derive their armor from the 
mine. I have heard of mackerel visiting the copper banks 
at a particular season ; this fish, perchance, has its habitat 
in the Coppermine River. I have caught white chivin of 
great size in the Aboljacknagesic, where it empties into the 
Penobscot, at the base of Mount Ktaadn, but no red ones 
there. The latter variety seems not to have been suflficiently 
observed. 

The Dace, Leuciscus argenteus, is a slight silvery minnow, 
found generally in the middle of the stream, where the cur- 
rent is most rapid, and frequently confounded with the last 
named. 

The Shiner, Leuciscus crysoleucas, is a soft-scaled and 
tender fish, the victim of its stronger neighbors, found in 
all places, deep and shallow, clear and turbid; generally 
the first nibbler at the bait, but, with its small mouth and 
nibbling propensities, not easily caught. It is a gold or 
silver bit that passes current in the river, its limber tail 
dimpling the surface in sport or flight. I have seen the fry, 
when frightened by something thrown into the water, leap 
out by dozens, together with the dace, and wreck themselves 
upon a floating plank. It is the little light-infant of the 
river, with body armor of gold or silver spangles, slipping 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 19 

gliding its life through with a quirk of the tail, half in the 
water, half in the air, upward and ever upward with flitting 
fin to more crystalline tides, yet still abreast of us dwellers 
on the bank. It is almost dissolved by the summer heats. 
A slighter and lighter colored shiner is found in one of our 
ponds. 

The Pickerel, Esox reticulatus, the swiftest, wariest, and 
most ravenous of fishes, is very common in the shallow and 
weedy lagoons along the sides of the stream. It is a solemn, 
stately, ruminant fish, lurking under the shadow of a pad at 
noon, with still, circumspect, voracious eye, motionless as a 
jewel set in water, or moving slowly along to take up its 
position, darting from time to time at such unlucky fish or 
frog or insect as comes within its range, and swallowing it at 
a gulp. I have caught one which had swallowed a brother 
pickerel half as large as itself, with the tail still visible in its 
mouth, while the head was already digested in its stomach. 
Sometimes a striped snake, bound to greener meadows across 
the stream, ends its undulatory progress in the same re- 
ceptacle. They are so greedy and impetuous that they are 
frequently caught by being entangled in the line the moment 
it is cast. Fishermen also distinguish the brook pickerel, 
a shorter and thicker fish than the former. 

The Horned Pout, Pimelodus nebulosus, sometimes called 
Minister, from the peculiar squeaking noise it makes when 
drawn out of the water, is a dull and blundering fellow, and 
like the eel vespertinal in his habits, and fond of the mud. 
It bites deliberately as if about its business. They are taken 
at night with a mass of worms strung on a thread, which 
catches in their teeth, sometimes three or four, with an eel, 
at one pull. They are extremely tenacious of life, opening 
and shutting their mouths for half an hour after their heads 
have been cut off. A bloodthirsty and bullying race of 
rangers, inhabiting the fertile river bottoms, with ever a 
lance in rest, and ready to do battle with their nearest neigh- 
bor. I have observed them in summer, when every other 
one had a long and bloody scar upon his back, where the 
skin was gone, the mark, perhaps, of some fierce encounter. 
Sometimes the fry, not an inch long, are seen darkening the 
shore with their myriads. 

The Suckers, Catostomi Bostonienses and tiiberculati, Com- 
mon and Horned, perhaps on an average the largest of our 



20 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

fishes, may be seen in shoals of a hundred or more, stemming 
the current in the sun, on their mysterious migrations, and 
sometimes sucking in the bait which the fisherman suffers 
to float toward them. The former, which sometimes grow 
to a large size, are frequently caught by the hand in the 
brooks, or, like the red chivins, are jerked out by a hook 
fastened firmly to the end of a stick and placed under their 
jaws. They are hardly known to the mere angler, however, 
not often biting at his baits, though the spearer carries home 
many a mess in the spring. To our village eyes, these shoals 
have a foreign and imposing aspect, realizing the fertility of 
the seas. 

The Common Eel, too, Murcena Bostoniensis, the only 
species known in the State, a slimy, squirming creature, in- 
formed of mud, still squirming in the pan, is speared and 
hooked up with various success. Me thinks it too occurs in 
pictiu-e, left after the deluge, in many a meadow high and 
dry. 

In the shallow parts of the river, where the current is rapid, 
and the bottom pebbly, you may sometimes see the curious 
circular nests of the Lamprey Eel, Petromyzon Americanus, 
the American Stone-Sucker, as large as a cart wheel, a foot 
or two in height, and sometimes rising half a foot above the 
surface of the water. They collect these stones, of the size 
of a hen's egg, with their mouths, as their name impKes, and 
are said to fashion them into circles with their tails. They 
ascend falls by clinging to the stones, which may sometimes 
be raised by lifting the fish by the tail. As they are not 
seen on their way down the streams, it is thought by fisher- 
men that they never return, but waste away and die, clinging 
to rocks and stumps of trees for an indefinite period ; a tragic 
feature in the scenery of the river bottoms, worthy to be 
remembered with Shakspeare's description of the sea-floor. 
They are rarely seen in our waters at present, on account 
of the dams, though they are taken in great quantities at 
the mouth of the river in Lowell. Their nests, which are 
very conspicuous, look more like art than anything in the 
river. 

If we had leisure this afternoon, we might turn our prow 
up the brooks in quest of the classical trout and the minnows. 
Of the last alone, according to M. Agassiz, several of the 
species found in this town are yet undescribed. These would, 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 21 

perhaps, complete the list of our finny contemporaries in 
the Concord waters. 

Salmon, Shad, and Alewives were formerly abundant 
here, and taken in weirs by the Indians, who taught this 
method to the whites, by whom they were used as food and 
as manure, until the dam, and afterward the canal at Billerica, 
and the factories at Lowell, put an end to their migrations 
hitherward ; though it is thought that a few more enterpris- 
ing shad may still occasionally be seen in this part of the 
river. It is said, to axjcount for the destruction of the fishery, 
that those who at that time represented the interests of the 
fishermen and the fishes, remembering between what dates 
they were accustomed to take the grown shad, stipulated 
that the dams should be left open for that season only, and 
the fry, which go down a month later, were consequently 
stopped and destroyed by myriads. Others say that the 
fish-ways were not properly constructed. Perchance, after 
a few thousands of years, if the fishes will be patient, and 
pass their summers elsewhere meanwhile, nature will have 
levelled the Billerica dam, and the Lowell factories, and the 
Grass-ground River run clear again, to be explored by new 
migratory shoals, even as far as the Hopkinton pond and 
Westborough swamp. 

One would like to know more of that race, now extinct, 
whose seines lie rotting in the garrets of their children, who 
openly professed the trade of fishermen, and even fed their 
townsmen creditably, not skulking through the meadows 
to a rainy afternoon sport. Dim visions we still get of 
miraculous draughts of fishes, and heaps uncountable by 
the riverside, from the tales of our seniors sent on horseback 
in their childhood from the neighboring towns, perched on 
saddle-bags, with instructions to get the one bag filled with 
shad, the other with alewives. At least one memento of 
those days may still exist in the memory of this generation, 
in the familiar appellation of a celebrated train-band of this 
town, whose untrained ancestors stood creditably at Con- 
cord North Bridge. Their captain, a man of piscatory 
tastes, having duly warned his company to turn out on a 
certain day, they, like obedient soldiers, appeared promptly 
on parade at the appointed time, but, unfortunately, they 
went undrilled, except in the manoeuvres of a soldier's wit 
and unlicensed jesting, that May day; for their captain, 



22 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

forgetting his own appointment, and warned only by the 
favorable aspect of the heavens, as he had often done before, 
went a fishing that afternoon, and his company thenceforth 
was known to old and young, grave and gay, as " The Shad," 
and by the youths of this vicinity this was long regarded as 
the proper name of all the irregular militia in Christendom. 
But, alas, no record of these fishers' lives remains, that we 
know of, unless it be one brief page of hard but unquestion- 
able history, which occurs in Day Book No. 4, of an old trader 
of this town, long since dead, which shows pretty plainly 
what constituted a fisherman's stock in trade in those days. 
It purports to be a Fisherman's Account Current, probably 
for the fishing season of the year 1805, during which months 
he purchased daily rum and sugar, sugar and rum, N. E. 
and W. I., "one cod line," "one brown mug," and "a line 
for the seine;" rum and sugar, sugar and rum, "good loaf 
sugar," and "good brown," W. I. and N. E., in short and 
uniform entries to the bottom of the page, all carried out in 
pounds, shillings, and pence, from March 25th to June 5th, 
and promptly settled by receiving "cash in full" at the last 
date. But perhaps not so settled altogether. These were 
the necessaries of life in those days ; with salmon, shad, and 
alewives, fresh and pickled, he was thereafter independent 
on the groceries. Rather a preponderance of the fluid ele- 
ments ; but such was this fisherman's nature. I can faintly 
remember to have seen the same fisher in my earliest youth, 
still as near the river as he could get, with uncertain undula- 
tory step, after so many things had gone down stream, swing- 
ing a scythe in the meadow, his bottle like a serpent hid in 
the grass ; himself as yet not cut down by the Great Mower. 
Surely the fates are forever kind, though Nature's laws 
are more immutable than any despot's, yet to man's daily 
life they rarely seem rigid, but permit him to relax with license 
in summer weather. He is not harshly reminded of the 
things he may not do. She is very kind and liberal to all 
men of vicious habits, and certainly does not deny them 
quarter ; they do not die without priest. Still they main- 
tain life along the way, keeping this side the Styx, still hearty, 
still resolute, "never better in their lives;" and again, after 
a dozen years have elapsed, they start up from behind a 
hedge, asking for work and wages for able-bodied men. Who 
has not met such 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 23 

"a beggar on the way, 

Who sturdily could gang ? " . . . 
"Who cared neither for wind nor wet, 
In lands where'er he past?" 

"That bold adopts each house he views, his own ; 
Makes every pulse his checquer, and, at pleasure. 
Walks forth, and taxes all the world, like Caesar;" — 

As if consistency were the secret of health, while thie poor 
inconsistent aspirant man, seeking to live a pure life, feeding 
on air, divided against himself, cannot stand, but pines and 
dies after a life of sickness, on beds of down. 

The unwise are accustomed to speak as if some were not 
sick; but methinks the difference between men in respect 
to health is not great enough to lay much stress upon. Some 
are reputed sick and some are not. It often happens that 
the sicker man is the nurse to the soimder. 

Shad are still taken in the basin of Concord River at Lowell, 
where they are said to be a month earlier than the Merrimack 
shad, on account of the warmth of the water. Still patiently, 
almost pathetically, with instinct not to be discouraged, not 
to be reasoned mth, revisiting their old haunts, as if their 
stern fates would relent, and still met by the Corporation 
with its dam. Poor shad! where is thy redress? When 
Nature gave thee instinct, gave she thee the heart to bear 
thy fate? Still wandering the sea in thy scaly armor to 
inquire humbly at the mouths of rivers if man has perchance 
left them free for thee to enter. By countless shoals loiter- 
ing uncertain meanwhile, merely stemming the tide there, 
in danger from sea foes in spite of thy bright armor, await- 
ing new instructions, until the sands, until the water itseK, 
tell thee if it be so or not. Thus by whole migrating nations, 
full of instinct, which is thy faith, in this backward spring, 
turned adrift, and perchance knowest not where men do not 
dwell, where there are not factories, in these days. Armed 
with no sword, no electric shock, but mere Shad, armed only 
with innocence and a just cause, with tender dumb mouth 
only forward, and scales easy to be detached. I for one am 
with thee, and who knows what may avail a crow-bar against 
that Billerica dam ? — Not despairing when whole myriads 
have gone to feed those sea monsters during thy suspense, 
but still brave, indifferent, on easy fin there, like shad reserved 



24 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

for higher destinies. WilUng to be decimated for man's 
behoof after the spawning season. Away with the superficial 
and selfish phi\-anthropy of men, — who knows what admi- 
rable virtue of fishes may be below low-water mark, bearing 
up against a hard destiny, not admired by that fellow creature 
who alone can appreciate it ! Who hears the fishes when 
they cry? It will not be forgotten by some memory that we 
were contemporaries. Thou shalt ere long have thy way 
up the rivers, up all the rivers of the globe, if I am not mis- 
taken. Yea, even thy dull watery dream shall be more than 
realized. If it were not so, but thou wert to be overlooked at 
first and at last, then would not I take their heaven. Yes, 
I say so, who think I know better than thou canst. Keep 
a stiff fin then, and stem all the tides thou mayest meet. 

At length it would seem that the interests, not of the fishes 
only, but of the men of Way land, of Sudbury, of Concord, 
demand the levelling of that dam. Innimaerable acres of 
meadow are waiting to be made dry land, wild native grass 
to give place to English. The farmers stand with scythes 
whet, waiting the subsiding of the waters, by gravitation, by 
evaporation or otherwise, but sometimes their eyes do not 
rest, their wheels do not roll, on the quaking meadow ground 
during the haying season at all. So many sources of wealth 
inaccessible. They rate the loss hereby incurred in the single 
town of Wayland alone as equal to the expense of keeping 
a hundred yoke of oxen the year round. One year, as I 
learn, not long ago, the farmers standing ready to drive their 
teams afield as usual, the water gave no signs of falling ; with- 
out new attraction in the heavens, without freshet or visible 
cause, still standing stagnant at an unprecedented height. 
All hydrometers were at fault ; some trembled for their Eng- 
lish even. But speedy emissaries revealed the unnatural 
secret, in the new float-board, wholly a foot in width, added 
to their already too high privileges by the dam proprietors. 
The hundred yoke of oxen, meanwhile, standing patient, 
gazing wishfully meadowward, at that inaccessible waving 
native grass, uncut but by the great mower Time, who cuts 
so broad a swathe, without so much as a wisp to wind about 
their horns. 

That was a long pull from Ball's Hill to Carlisle Bridge, 
sitting with our faces to the south, a slight breeze rising from 
the north ; but nevertheless water still runs and grass grows, 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 25 

for now, having passed the bridge between Carlisle and Bed- 
ford, we see men haying far off in the meadow, their heads 
waving hke the grass which they cut. In the distance the 
wind seemed to bend all ahke. As the night stole over, 
such a freshness was wafted across the meadow that every 
blade of cut-grass seemed to teem with life. Faint purple 
clouds began to be reflected in the water, and the cow-bells 
tinkled louder along the banks, while, like sly water rats, 
we stole along nearer the shore, looking for a place to pitch 
our camp. 

At length, when we had made about seven miles, as far as 
Billerica, we moored our boat on the west side of a little rising 
ground which in the spring forms an island in the river. Here 
we foimd huckleberries still hanging upon the bushes, where 
they seemed to have slowly ripened for our especial use. 
Bread and sugar, and cocoa boiled in river water, made our 
repast, and as we had drank in the fluvial prospect all day, 
so now we took a draught of the water with our evening 
meal to propitiate the river gods, and whet our vision for 
the sights it was to behold. The sun was setting on the one 
hand, while our eminence was contributing its shadow to the 
night, on the other. It seemed insensibly to grow hghter 
as the night shut in, and a distant and solitary farm-house 
was revealed, which before lurked in the shadows of the noon. 
There was no other house in sight, nor any cultivated field. 
To the right and left, as far as the horizon, were straggling 
pine woods with their plumes against the sky, and across 
the river were rugged hills, covered with shrub oaks, tangled 
with grape vines and ivy, with here and there a gray rock 
jutting out from the maze. The sides of these chffs, though 
a quarter of a mile distant, were almost heard to rustle while 
we looked at them, it was such a leafy wilderness; a place 
for fauns and satyrs, and where bats hung all day to the rocks, 
and at evening flitted over the water, and fireflies husbanded 
their hght under the grass and leaves against the night. When 
we had pitched our tents on the hill-side, a few rods from the 
shore, we sat looking through its triangular door in the twi- 
light at our lonely mast on the shore, just seen above the 
alders, and hardly yet come to a stand-still from the swaying 
of the stream ; the first encroachment of commerce on this 
land.^ There was our port, our Ostia. That straight geo- 
metrical line against the water and the sky stood for the last 



26 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

refinements of civilized life, and what of sublimity there is 
in history was there symboUzed. 

For the most part, there was no recognition of human life 
in the night, no human breathing was heard, only the breath- 
ing of the wind. As we sat up, kept awake by the novelty 
of our situation, we heard at intervals foxes stepping about 
over the dead leaves, and brushing the dewy grass close to 
our tent, and once a musquash fumbUng among the potatoes 
and melons in our boat, but when we hastened to the shore 
we could detect only a ripple in the water ruffling the disk of 
a star. At intervals we were serenaded by the song of a dream- 
ing sparrow or the throttled cry of an owl, but after each 
sound which near at hand broke the stillness of the night, 
each crackling of the twigs, or rustling among the leaves, 
there was a sudden pause, and deeper and more conscious 
silence, as if the intruder were aware that no hfe was right- 
fully abroad at that hour. There was a fire in Lowell, as 
we judged, this night, and we saw the horizon blazing, and 
heard the distant alarm bells, as it were a faint tinkling music 
borne to these woods. But the most constant and memor- 
able sound of a simimer's night, which we did not fail to hear 
every night afterward, though at no time so incessantly and 
so favorably as now, was the barking of the house dogs, 
from the loudest and hoarsest bark to the faintest aerial 
palpitation under the eaves of heaven, from the patient but 
anxious mastiff to the timid and wakeful terrier, at first loud 
and rapid, then faint and slow, to be imitated only in a whis- 
per ; wow- wow-wow-wow — wo — wo — w — w. Even in a 
retired and uninhabited district like this, it was a sufficiency 
of sound for the ear of night, and more impressive than any 
music. I have heard the voice of a hound, just before day- 
light, while the stars were shining, from over the woods and 
river, far in the horizon, when it sounded as sweet and melo- 
dious as an instrument. The hounding of a dog pursuing 
a fox or other animal in the horizon, may have first suggested 
the notes of the hunting horn to alternate with and relieve 
the lungs of the dog. This natural bugle long resounded in 
the woods of the ancient world before the horn was invented. 
The very dogs that sullenly bay the moon from farmyards 
in these nights, excite more heroism in our breasts than all 
the civil exhortations or war sermons of the age. "I had 
rather be a dog, and bay the moon," than many a Roman 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 27 

that I know. The night is equally indebted to the clarion of 
the cock, with wakeful hope, from the very setting of the 
sun, prematurely ushering in the dawn. All these sounds, 
the crowing of cocks, the baying of dogs, and the hum of in- 
sects at noon, are the evidence of nature's health or sound 
state. Such is the never faiUng beauty and accuracy of lan- 
guage, the most perfect art in the world ; the chisel of a thou- 
sand years retouches it. 

At length the antepenultimate and drowsy hours drew on, 
and all sounds were denied entrance to our ears. 

Who sleeps by day and walks by night, 
Will meet no spirit but some sprite. 



SUNDAY 

"The river calmly flows, 
Through shining banks, through lonely glen. 
Where the owl shrieks, though ne'er the cheer of men 

Has stirred its mute repose, 
Still if you should walk there, you would go there again." 

— Channing. 

"The Indians tell us of a beautiful River lying far to the south, 
which they call Merrimac." 

SiEUR DE MoNTS. Relations of the Jesuits, 1604. 

In the morning the river and adjacent country were cov- 
ered with a dense fog, through which the smoke of our fire 
curled up Uke a still subtiler mist ; but before we had rowed 
many rods, the sun arose and the fog rapidly dispersed, leav- 
ing a sUght steam only to curl along the surface of the water. 
It was a quiet Sunday morning, with more of the auroral 
rosy and white than of the yellow hght in it, as if it dated from 
earlier than the fall of man, and still preserved a heathenish 
integrity ; — 

An early unconverted Saint, 

Free from noontide or evening taint. 

Heathen without reproach. 

That did upon the civil day encroach, 

And ever since its birth 

Had trod the outskirts of the earth. 



28 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

But the impressions which the morning makes vanish with 
its dews, and not even the most ''persevering mortal" can 
preserve the memory of its freshness to mid-day. As we 
passed the various islands, or what were islands in the spring, 
rowing with our backs down stream, we gave names to them. 
The one on which we had camped we called Fox Island, and 
one fine densely wooded island surrounded by deep water 
and overrun by grape vines, which looked like a mass of 
verdure and of flowers cast upon the waves, we named Grape 
Island. From Ball's Hill to Billerica meeting-house, the 
river was still twice as broad as in Concord, a deep, dark, 
and dead stream, flowing between gentle hills and sometimes 
cliffs, and well wooded all the way. It was a long woodland 
lake bordered with willows. For long reaches we could see 
neither house nor cultivated field, nor any sign of the vicinity 
of man. Now we coasted along some shallow shore by the 
edge of a dense palisade of bulrushes, which straightly bounded 
the water as if dipt by art, reminding us of the reed forts 
of the East Indians, of which we had read ; and now the bank 
slightly raised was overhung with graceful grasses and various 
species of brake, whose downy stems stood closely grouped 
and naked as in a vase, while their heads spread several 
feet on either side. The dead limbs of the willow were 
rounded and adorned by the climbing mikania, mikania 
scandens, which filled every crevice in the leafy bank, con- 
trasting agreeably with the gray bark of its supporter and 
the balls of the buttonbush. The water willow, salix Purshi- 
ana, when it is of large size and entire, is the most graceful 
and ethereal of our trees. Its masses of fight green fofiage, 
piled one upon another to the height of twenty or thirty feet, 
seemed to float on the surface of the water, while the sfight 
gray stems and the shore were hardly visible between them. 
No tree is so wedded to the water, and harmonizes so well 
with still streams. It is even more graceful than the weeping 
willow, or any pendulous trees, which dip their branches 
in the stream instead of being buoyed up by it. Its limbs 
curved outward over the surface as if attracted by it. It 
had not a New England but an oriental character, reminding 
us of trim Persian gardens, of Haroun Alraschid, and the arti- 
ficial lakes of the east. 

As we thus dipped our way along between fresh masses 
of fofiage overrun with the grape and smaller flowering vines, 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 29 

the surface was so cakn, and both air and water so trans- 
parent, that the flight of a kingfisher or robin over the river 
was as distinctly seen reflected in the water below as in the 
air above. The birds seemed to flit through submerged 
groves, ahghting on the yielding sprays, and their clear notes 
to come up from below. We were uncertain whether the 
water floated the land, or the land held the water in its bosom. 
It was such a season, in short, as that in which one of our 
Concord poets sailed on its stream, and sung its quiet glories. 

"There is an inward voice, that in the stream 
Sends forth its spirit to the listening ear, 
And in a calm content it floweth on. 
Like wisdom, welcome with its own respect. 
Clear in its breast lie all these beauteous thoughts, 
It doth receive the green and graceful trees. 
And the gray rocks smile in its peaceful arms, — " 

And more he sung, but too serious for our page. For every 
oak and birch, too, growing on the hilltop, as well as for these 
elms and willows, we knew that there was a graceful, ethereal 
and ideal tree making down from the roots, and sometimes 
Nature in high tides brings her mirror to its foot and makes 
it visible. The stillness was intense and almost conscious, 
as if it were a natural Sabbath. The air was so elastic and 
crystalUne that it had the same effect on the landscape that 
a glass has on a picture, to give it an ideal remoteness and 
perfection. The landscape was clothed in a mild and quiet 
light, in which the woods and fences checkered and parti- 
tioned it with new regularity, and rough and uneven fields 
stretched away with lawn-like smoothness to the horizon, 
and the clouds, finely distinct and picturesque, seemed a 
fit drapery to hang over fairy-land. The world seemed decked 
for some holyday or prouder pageantry, with silken streamers 
flying, and the course of our lives to wind on before us like 
a green lane into a country maze, at the season when fruit 
trees are in blossom. 

Why should not our whole fife and its scenery be actually 
thus fair and distinct? All our fives want a suitable back- 
ground. They should at least, fike the life of the anchorite, 
be as impressive to behold as objects in the desert, a broken 
shaft or crumbling mound against a limitless horizon. Char- 
acter always secures for itself this advantage, and is thus 



30 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

distinct and unrelated to near or trivial objects, whether 
things or persons. On this same stream a maiden once sailed 
in my boat, thus unattended but by invisible guardians, and 
as she sat in the prow there was nothing but herself between 
the steersman and the sky. I could then say with the poet : — 

"Sweet falls the summer air 
Over her frame who sails with me ; 
Her way like that is beautifully free, 
Her nature far more rare, 
And is her constant heart of virgin purity." 

At evening, still the very stars seem but this maiden's emis- 
saries and reporters of her progress. 

Low in the eastern sky 
Is set thy glancing eye ; 
And though its gracious light 
Ne'er riseth to my sight, 
Yet every star that climbs 
Above the gnarled limbs 

Of yonder hill, 
Conveys thy gentle will. 

Believe I knew thy thought, 
And that the zephyrs brought 
Thy kindest wishes through, 
As mine they bear to you, 
That some attentive cloud 
Did pause amid the crowd 

Over my head, 
While gentle things were said. 

Believe the thrushes sung, 
And that the flower bells rung, 
That herbs exhaled their scent. 
And beasts knew what was meant, 
The trees a welcome waved, 
And lakes their margins laved, 

When thy free mind 
To my retreat did wind. 

It was a summer eve. 
The air did gently heave, 
While yet a low hung cloud 
Thy eastern skies did shroud ; 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 31 

The lightning's silent gleam, 
Startling my drowsy (&eam, 
Seemed like the flash 
Under thy dark eyelash. 

Still will I strive to be 
As if thou wert with me ; 
Whatever path I take, 
It shall be for thy sake. 
Of gentle slope and wide, 
As thou wert by my side, 

Without a root 
To trip thy gentle foot. 

I'll walk with gentle pace, 
And choose the smoothest place, 
And careful dip the oar, 
And shun the winding shore, 
And gently steer my boat 
Where water lilies float. 

And cardinal flowers 
Stand in their sylvan bowers. 

It required some rudeness to disturb with our boat the 
mirror-lflie surface of the water, in which every twig and 
blade of grass was so faithfully reflected; too faithfully 
indeed for art to imitate, for only Nature may exaggerate 
herself. The shallowest still water is unfathomable. Wher- 
ever the trees and skies are reflected there is more than 
Atlantic depth, and no danger of fancy running agroimd. 
We noticed that it required a separate intention of the eye, 
a more free and abstracted vision, to see the reflected trees 
and the sky, than to see the river bottom merely; and so 
are there manifold visions in the direction of every object, 
and even the most opaque reflect the heavens from their 
surface. Some men have their eyes naturally intended to 
the one, and some to the other object. 

"A man that looks on glass, 
On it may stay his eye, 
Or, if he pleaseth, through it pass, 
And the heavens espy." 

Two men in a skiff, whom we passed hereabouts, floating 
buoyantly amid the reflections of the trees, like a feather in 



32 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

mid air, or a leaf which is wafted gently from its tmg to the 
water without turning over, seemed still in their element, 
and to have very delicately availed themselves of the natural 
laws. Their floating there was a beautiful and successful 
experiment in natural philosophy, and it served to ennoble 
in our eyes the art of navigation, for as birds fly and fishes 
swim, so these men sailed. It reminded us how much fairer 
and nobler all the actions of man might be, and that our fife 
in its whole economy might be as beautiful as the fairest 
works of art or nature. 

The sun lodged on the old gray cliffs, and glanced from 
every pad ; the bulrushes and flags seemed to rejoice in the 
deUcious light and air; the meadows were a-drinking at 
their leisure ; the frogs sat meditating, all Sabbath thoughts, 
summing up their week, with one eye out on the golden sun, 
and one toe upon a reed, eyeing the wondrous universe in 
which they act their part ; the fishes swam more staid and 
soberly, as maidens go to church ; shoals of golden and silver 
minnows rose to the siuf ace to behold the heavens, and then 
sheered off into more sombre aisles; they swept by as if 
moved by one mind, continually gliding past each other, 
and yet preserving the form of their battahon unchanged, 
as if they were still embraced by the transparent membrane 
which held the spawn ; a young band of brethren and sisters, 
trying their new fins; now they wheeled, now shot ahead, 
and when we drove them to the shore and cut them off, they 
dexterously tacked and passed underneath the boat. Over 
the old wooden bridges no traveller crossed, and neither 
the river nor the fishes avoided to glide between the abut- 
ments. 

Here was a village not far off behind the woods, Billerica, 
settled not long ago, and the children still bear the names of 
the first settlers in this late "howling wilderness;" yet to 
all intents and purposes it is as old as Fernay or as Mantua, 
an old gray town, where men grow old and sleep already 
under moss-grown monuments, — outgrow their usefulness. 
This is ancient Billerica (Villarica?), now in its dotage. I 
never heard that it was young. See, is not Nature here gone 
to decay, farms all run out, meeting-house grown gray and 
racked with age? If you would know of its early youth, ask 
those old gray rocks in the pasture. It has a bell that sounds 
sometimes as far as Concord woods; I have heard that. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 33 

aye, — hear it now. No wonder that such a sound startled 
the dreaming Indian, and frightened his game, when the first 
bells were swung on trees, and sounded through the forest 
beyond the plantations of the white man. But to-day I 
like best the echo amid these cliffs and woods. It is no 
feeble imitation, but rather its original, or as if some rural 
Orpheus played over the strain again to show how it should 
sound. 

Dong, sounds the brass in the east, 
As if to a funeral feast, 
But I like that sound the best 
Out of the fluttering west. 

The steeple ringeth a knell, 
But the fairies' silvery bell 
Is the voice of that gentle folk. 
Or else the horizon that spoke. 

Its metal is not of brass, 
But air, and water, and glass. 
And under a cloud it is swung, 
And by the wind it is rung. 

When the steeple tolleth the noon. 

It soundeth not so soon, 

Yet it rings a far earlier hour, 

And the sun has not reached its tower. 

On the other hand, the road runs up to Carhsle, city of the 
woods, which, if it is less civil, is the more natural. It does 
well hold the earth together. It gets laughed at because it 
is a small town, I know, but nevertheless it is a place where 
great men may be born any day, for fair winds and foul blow 
right on over it without distinction. It has a meeting-house 
and horse-sheds, a tavern and a blacksmith's shop for centre, 
and a good deal of wood to cut and cord yet. And 

''Bedford, most noble Bedford, 
I shall not thee forget." 

History has remembered thee; especially that meek and 
humble petition of thy old planters, hke the waihng of the 
Lord's own people, ''To the gentlemen, the selectmen" of 
Concord, praying to be erected into a separate parish. We 



34 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

can hardly credit that so plaintive a psalm resounded but 
little more than a century ago along these Babylonish waters. 
"In the extreme difficult seasons of heat and cold," said they, 
"we were ready to say of the Sabbath, Behold what a weari- 
ness is it." — "Gentlemen, if our seeking to draw off proceed 
from any disaffection to our present reverend pastor, or the 
Christian society with whom we have taken such sweet counsel 
together, and walked unto the house of God in company, 
then hear us not this day, but we greatly desire, if God please, 
to be eased of our burden on the Sabbath, the travel and 
fatigue thereof, that the word of God may be nigh to us, near 
to our houses, and in our hearts, that we and our httle ones 
may serve the Lord. We hope that God, who stirred up the 
spirit of Cyrus to set forward temple work, has stirred us up 
to ask, and will stir you up to grant, the prayer of our petition ; 
so shall your humble petitioners ever pray, as in duty bound, 
— ." And so the temple work went forward here to a happy 
conclusion. Yonder in Carhsle the building of the temple 
was many wearisome years delayed, not that there was want-- 
ing of SMttim wood, or the gold of Ophir, but a site therefor 
convenient to all the worshippers; whether on "Buttrick's 
Plain," or rather on "Poplar Hill:" it was a tedious ques- 
tion. 

In this Billerica sohd men must have Hved, select from 
year to year, a series of town clerks, at least, and there are 
old records that you may search. Some spring the white 
man came, built him a house, and made a clearing here, letting 
in the sun, dried up a farm, piled up the old gray stones in 
fences, cut down the pines around his dweUing, planted or- 
chard seeds brought from the old country, and persuaded 
the civil apple tree to blossom next to the wild pine and the 
juniper, shedding its perfume in the wilderness. Their old 
stocks still remain. He culled the graceful elm from out the 
woods and from the river-side, and so refined and smoothed 
his village plot. And thus he plants a town. He rudely 
bridged the stream, and drove his team afield into the river 
meadows, cut the wild grass, and laid bare the homes of 
beaver, otter, muskrat, and with the whetting of his scythe 
scared off the deer and bear. He set up a mill, and fields of 
Enghsh grain sprang in the virgin soil. And with his grain 
he scattered the seeds of the dandelion and the wild trefoil 
over the meadows, mingling his Enghsh flowers with the wild 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 35 

native ones. The bristling burdock, the sweet scented cat- 
nip, and the humble yarrow, planted themselves along his 
woodland road, they too seeking *' freedom to worship God'' 
in their way. The white man's mullein soon reigned in Indian 
corn-fields, and sweet scented EngHsh grasses clothed the 
new soil. Where, then, could the red man set his foot? 
The honey bee hummed through the Massachusetts woods, 
and sipped the wild flowers round the Indian's wigwam, 
perchance unnoticed, when, with prophetic warning, it stung 
the red child's hand, forerunner of that industrious tribe 
that was to come and pluck the wild flower of his race up by 
the root. 

The white man comes, pale as the dawn, with a load of 
thought, with a slumbering inteUigence as a fire raked up, 
knowing well what he knows, not guessing but calculating; 
strong in community, yielding obedience to authority; of 
experienced race ; of wonderful, wonderful common sense ; 
dull but capable, slow but persevering, severe but just, of 
little humor but genuine ; a laboring man, despising game and 
sport ; building a house that endures, a framed house. He 
buys the Indian's moccasins and baskets, then buys his hunt- 
ing grounds, and at length forgets where he is buried, and 
plows up his bones. And here town records, old, tattered, 
time-worn, weather-stained chronicles, contain the Indian 
sachem's mark, perchance an arrow or a beaver, and the few 
fatal words by which he deeded his hunting grounds away. 
He comes with a fist of ancient Saxon, Norman, and Celtic 
names, and strews them up and down this river, — Framing- 
ham, Sudbury, Bedford, Carhsle, Billerica, Chelmsford, — 
and this is New Angle-land, and these are the new West 
Saxons, whom the red men call, not Angle-ish or EngHsh, but 
Yengeese, and so at last they are known for Yankees. 

When we were opposite to the middle of Billerica, the fields 
on either hand had a soft and cultivated EngHsh aspect, the 
village spire being seen over the copses which skirt the river, 
and sometimes an orchard straggled down to the water side, 
though, generally, our course this forenoon was the wildest 
part of our voyage. It seemed that men led a quiet and very 
civil life there. The inhabitants were plainly cultivators 
of the earth, and lived under an organized political govern- 
ment. The school-house stood with a meek aspect, entreat- 
ing a long truce to war and savage life. Every one finds by 



36 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

his own experience, as well as in history, that the era in which 
men cultivate the apple, and the amenities of the garden, is 
essentially different from that of the hunter and forest life, 
and neither can displace the other without loss. We have 
all had our day dreams, as well as more prophetic nocturnal 
visions, but as for farming, I am convinced that my genius 
dates from an older era than the agricultural. I would at 
least strike my spade into the earth with such careless free- 
dom but accuracy as the woodpecker his bill into a tree. 
There is in my nature, methinks, a singular yearning toward 
all wildness. I know of no redeeming quahties in myself 
but a sincere love for some things, and when I am reproved 
I fall back on to this ground. What have I to do with plows ? 
I cut another furrow than you see. Where the off ox treads, 
there is it not, it is further off ; where the nigh ox walks, it 
will not be, it is nigher still. If corn fails, my crop fails not, 
and what are drought and rain to me? The rude Saxon 
pioneer will sometimes pine for that refinement and artificial 
beauty which are EngUsh, and love to hear the sound of such 
sweet and classical names as the Pentland and Malvern Hills, 
the Chffs of Dover and the Trossacks, Richmond, Derwent, 
and Winandermere, which are to him now instead of the 
Acropohs and Parthenon, of Baiae, and Athens with its sea 
walls, and Arcadia and Tempo. 

Greece, who am I that should remember thee, 

Thy Marathon and thy Thermopylse ? 

Is my life vulgar, my fate mean, 

Which on these golden memories can lean? 

We are apt enough to be pleased with such books as Evelyn's 
Sylva, Acetarium, and Kalendarium Hortense, but they 
imply a relaxed nerve in the reader. Gardening is civil and 
social, but it wants the vigor and freedom of the forest and 
the outlaw. There may be an excess of cultivation as well 
as of anything else, until civilization becomes pathetic. A 
highly cultivated man, — all whose bones can be bent ! 
whose heaven-born virtues are but good manners! The 
young pines springing up in the corn-fields from year to year 
are to me a refreshing fact. We talk of civilizing the Indian, 
but that is not the name for his improvement. By the wary 
independence and aloofness of his dim forest life he preserves 
his intercourse with his native gods, and is admitted from 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 37 

time to time to a rare and peculiar society with Nature. 
He has glances of starry recognition to which our saloons 
are strangers. The steady illumination of his genius, dim 
only because distant, is like the faint but satisfying light of 
the stars compared with the dazzling but ineffectual and 
short-lived blaze of candles. The Society Islanders had 
their day-born gods, but they were not supposed to be "of 
equal antiquity with the atua fauau po, or night-born gods." 
It is true, there are the innocent pleasures of country life, and 
it is sometimes pleasant to make the earth yield her increase, 
and gather the fruits in their season, but the heroic spirit 
will not fail to dream of remoter retirements and more rugged 
paths. It will have its garden plots and its parterres else- 
where than on the earth, and gather nuts and berries by the 
way for its subsistence, or orchard fruits with such heed- 
lessness as berries. We would not always be soothing and 
taming Nature, breaking the horse and the ox, but sometimes 
ride the horse wild and chase the buffalo. The Indian's 
intercourse with Nature is at least such as admits of the great- 
est independence of each. If he is somewhat of a stranger 
in her midst, the gardener is too much of a familiar. There 
is something vulgar and foul in the latter's closeness to his 
mistress, something noble and cleanly in the former's dis- 
tance. In civihzation, as in a southern latitude, man degen- 
erates at length, and yields to the incursion of more northern 
tribes, 

"Some nation yet shut in 
With hills of ice." 

There are other, savager, and more primeval aspects of Nature 
than our poets have sung. It is only white man's poetry. 
Homer and Ossian even can never revive in London or Boston. 
And yet behold how these cities are refreshed by the mere 
tradition, or the imperfectly transmitted fragrance and flavor 
of these wild fruits. If we could listen but for an instant to 
the chaunt of the Indian muse, we should imderstand why 
he will not exchange his savageness for civilization. Nations 
are not whimsical. Steel and blankets are strong tempta- 
tions ; but the Indian does well to continue Indian. 

After sitting in my chamber many days, reading the poets, 
I have been out early on a foggy morning, and heard the cry 
of an owl in a neighboring wood as from a nature behind the 



38 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

common, unexplored by science or by literature. None of 
the feathered race has yet realized my youthful conceptions 
of the woodland depths. I had seen the red Election-bird 
brought from their recesses on my comrades' string, and 
fancied that their plumage would assume stranger and more 
dazzhng colors, like the tints of evening, in proportion as I 
advanced further into the darkness and solitude of the forest. 
Still less have I seen such strong and wild tints on any poet's 
string. 

These modern ingenious sciences and arts do not affect 
me as those more venerable arts of hunting and fishing, and 
even of husbandry in its primitive and sunple form ; as ancient 
and honorable trades as the sun and moon and winds pursue, 
coeval with the faculties of man, and invented when these were 
invented. We do not know their .John Gutenberg, or Richard 
Arkwright, though the poets would fain make them to have 
been gradually learned and taught. According to Gower, 

"And ladahel, as saith the boke. 
Firsts made nette, alnd fishes toke. 
Of huntyng eke he fond the chaoe, 
Whiche nowe is knows in many placs ; 
A tent of cloths, with cords and staks, 
Hs sstts up first, and did it maks." 

Also, Lydgate says : 

"Jason first saylsd, in story it is tolds, 
Toward Colchos, to wynns ths flses of golds. 
Csrss the Goddsss fond first ths tilths of londe : 



Also, Aristeus fonds first ths usage 

Of mylks, and cruddis, and of honsy swots ; 

Psryodss, for grsts avauntags, 

From flyntss smots fuyrs, daryng in ths roots." 

We read that Aristeus "obtained of Jupiter and Neptune, 
that the pestilential heat of the dog days, wherein was great 
mortality, should be mitigated with wind." This is one of 
those dateless benefits conferred on man, which have no 
record in our vulgar day, though we still find some similitude 
to them in our dreams, in which we have a more liberal and 
juster apprehension of things, unconstrained by habit. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 39 

which is then in some measure put off, and divested of memory, 
which we call history. 

According to fable, when the island of ^gina was depopu- 
lated by sickness, at the instance of Mslcus, Jupiter turned 
the ants into men, that is, as some think, he made men of 
the inhabitants who lived meanly like ants. This is perhaps 
the fullest history of those early days extant. 

The fable which is naturally and truly composed, so as to 
satisfy the imagination, ere it addresses the understanding, 
beautiful though strange as a wild flower, is to the wise man 
an apothegm, and admits of his most generous interpretation. 
When we read that Bacchus made the Tyrrhenian mariners 
mad, so that they leapt into the sea, mistaking it for a meadow 
full of flowers, and so became dolphins, we are not concerned 
about the historical truth of this, but rather a higher poetical 
truth. We seem to hear the music of a thought, and care 
not if the understanding be not gratified. For their beauty, 
consider the fables of Narcissus, of Endymion, of Memnon 
son of Morning, the representative of all promising youths 
who have died a premature death, and whose memory is 
melodiously prolonged to the latest morning; the beautiful 
stories of Phaeton, and of the Sirens whose isle shone afar 
off white with the bones of unburied men ; and the pregnant 
ones of Pan, Prometheus, and the Sphynx; and that long 
list of names which have already become part of the universal 
language of civilized men, and from proper are becoming 
common names or nouns, — the Sibyls, the Eumenides, the 
Parcse, the Graces, the Muses, Nemesis, &c. 

It is interesting to observe with what singular unanimity 
the furthest sundered nations and generations consent to 
give completeness and roundness to an ancient fable, of which 
they indistinctly appreciate the beauty or the truth. By 
a faint and dream-like effort, though it be only by the vote 
of a scientific body, the dullest posterity slowly add some 
trait to the mythus. As when astronomers call the lately 
discovered planet Neptune; or the asteroid Astrsea, that 
the Virgin who was driven from earth to heaven at the end 
of the golden age, may have her local habitation in the 
heavens more distinctly assigned her, — for the slightest 
recognition of poetic worth is significant. By such slow 
aggregation has mythology grown from the first. The very 



40 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

nursery tales of this generation, were the nursery tales of 
primeval races. They migrate from east to west, and again 
from west to east; now expanded into the "tale divine" 
of bards, now shrunk into a popular rhyme. This is an 
approach to that universal language which men have sought 
in vain. This fond reiteration of the oldest expressions of 
truth by the latest posterity, content with slightly and reli- 
giously re-touching the old material, is the most impressive 
proof of a common humanity. 

All nations love the same jests and tales, Jews, Christians, 
and Mahometans, and the same translated suffice for all. 
All men are children, and of one family. The same tale 
sends them all to bed, and wakes them in the morning. 
Joseph Wolff, the missionary, distributed copies of Robinson 
Crusoe, translated into Arabic, among the Arabs, and they 
made a great sensation. "Robinson Crusoe's adventures 
and wisdom," says he, "were read by Mahometans in the 
market-places of Sanaa, Hodyeda, and Loheya, and admired 
and believed!" On reading the book, the Arabians ex- 
claimed, "Oh, that Robinson Crusoe must have been a 
great prophet!" 

To some extent, mythology is only the most ancient history 
and biography. So far from being false or fabulous in the 
common sense, it contains only enduring and essential truth, 
the I and you, the here and there, the now and then, being 
omitted. Either time or rare wisdom writes it. Before 
printing was discovered, a century was equal to a thousand 
years. The poet is he who can write some pure mythology 
to-day without the aid of posterity. In how few words, for 
instance, the Greeks would have told the story of Abelard 
and Heloise, making but a sentence for our classical dic- 
tionary, — and then, perchance have stuck up their names 
to shine in some corner of the firmament. We moderns, 
on the other hand, collect only the raw materials of biography 
and history, "memoirs to serve for a history," which itself 
is but materials to serve for a mythology. How many 
volumes foUo would the Life and Labors of Prometheus have 
filled, if perchance it had fallen, as perchance it did first, 
in days of cheap printing! Who knows what shape the 
fable of Columbus will at length assume, to be confounded 
with that of Jason and the expedition of the Argonauts? 
And Franklin, — there may be a hne for him in the future 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 41 

classical dictionary, recording what that demigod did, and 

referring him to some new genealogy. "Son of and 

. He aided the Americans to gain their independence, 

instructed mankind in economy, and drew down Ughtning 
from the clouds." 

The hidden significance of these fables which is sometimes 
thought to have been detected, the ethics running parallel 
to the poetry and history, is not so remarkable as the 
readiness with which they may be made to express a variety 
of truths. As if they were the skeletons of still older and 
more universal truths than any whose flesh and blood they 
are for the time made to wear. It is like striving to make 
the sun, or the wind, or the sea, symbols to signify exclusively 
the particular thoughts of our day. But what signifies it? 
In the mythus a superhuman intelligence uses the uncon- 
scious thoughts and dreams of men as its hieroglyphics to 
address men unborn. In the history of the human mind, 
these glowing and ruddy fables precede the noon-day thoughts 
of men, as Aurora the sun's rays. The matutine intellect 
of the poet, keeping in advance of the glare of philosophy, 
always dwells in this auroral atmosphere. 

As we said before, the Concord is a dead stream, but its 
scenery is the more suggestive to the contemplative voyager, 
and this day its water was fuller of reflections than our pages 
even. Just before it reaches the falls in Billerica it is con- 
tracted, and becomes swifter and shallower, with a yellow 
pebbly bottom, hardly passable for a canal boat, leaving the 
broader and more stagnant portion above Hke a lake among 
the hills. All through the Concord, Bedford, and Billerica 
meadows, we had heard no murmur from its stream, except 
where some tributary runnel tumbled in, — 

Some tumultuous little rill, 

Purling round its storied pebble. 
Tinkling to the self-same tune, 
From September until June, 

Which no drought doth e'er enfeeble. 

Silent flows the parent stream, 

And if rocks do lie below, 
Smothers with her waves the din, 
As it were a youthful sin, 

Just as still, and just as slow. 



42 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

But now at length we heard this staid and primitive river 
rushing to her fall, Uke any rill. We here left its channel, 
just above the Billerica Falls, and entered the canal, which 
runs, or rather is conducted, six miles through the woods to 
the Merrimack at Middlesex, and as we did not care to loiter 
in this part of our voyage, while one ran along the tow-path 
drawing the boat by a cord, the other kept it off the shore 
with a pole, so that we accomplished the whole distance in 
httle more than an hour. This canal, which is the oldest in 
the country, and has even an antique look beside the more 
modern railroads, is fed by the Concord, so that we were still 
floating on its famiUar waters. It is so much water which 
the river lets for the advantage of commerce. There ap- 
peared some want of harmony in its scenery, since it was not 
of equal date with the woods and meadows through which it 
is led, and we missed the conciUatory influence of time on 
land and water; but in the lapse of ages, Nature will re- 
cover and indemnify herself, and gradually plant fit shrubs 
and flowers along its borders. Already the kingfisher sat 
upon a pine over the water, and the bream and pickerel 
swam below. Thus all works pass directly out of the hands 
of the architect into the hands of Nature, to be perfected. 

It was a retired and pleasant route, without houses or 
travellers, except some young men who were lounging upon 
a bridge in Chelmsford, who leaned impudently over the rails 
to pry into our concerns, but we caught the eye of the most 
forward, and looked at him till he was visibly discomfited. 
Not that there was any pecuhar efficacy in our look, but 
rather a sense of shame left in him which disarmed him. 

It is a very true and expressive phrase, ''He looked daggers 
at me," for the first pattern and prototype of all daggers 
must have been a glance of the eye. First, there was the 
glance of Jove's eye, then his fiery bolt, then, the material 
gradually hardening, tridents, spears, javehns, and finally, 
for the convenience of private men, daggers, krisses, and so 
forth, were invented. It is wonderful how we get about 
the streets without being wounded by these delicate and 
glancing weapons, a man can so nimbly whip out his rapier, 
or without being noticed carry it unsheathed. Yet after all, 
it is rare that one gets seriously looked at. 

As we passed under the last bridge over the canal, just 
before reaching the Merrimack, the people coming out of 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 43 

church paused to look at us from above, and apparently, so 
strong is custom, indulged in some heathenish comparisons ; 
but we were the truest observers of this sunny day. Accord- 
ing to Hesiod, 

" The seventh is a holy day, 
For then Latona brought forth golden-rayed Apollo," 

and by our reckoning this was the seventh day of the week, 
and not the first. I find among the papers of an old Justice 
of the Peace and Deacon of the town of Concord, this singular 
memorandum, which is worth preserving as a reUc of an 
ancient custom. After reforming the spelling and grammar, 
it rims as follows: — "Men that travelled with teams on 
the Sabbath, Dec. 18th, 1803, were Jeremiah Richardson 
and Jonas Parker, both of Shirley. They had teams with 
rigging such as is used to carry barrels, and they were travel- 
Ung westward. Richardson was questioned by the Hon. 
Ephraim Wood, Esq., and he said that Jonas Parker was his 
fellow traveller, and he further said that a Mr. Longley was 
his employer, who promised to bear him out." We were 
the men that were ghding northward, this Sept. 1st, 1839, 
with still team, and rigging not the most convenient to carry 
barrels, unquestioned by any Squire or Church Deacon, 
and ready to bear ourselves out, if need were. In the latter 
part of the seventeenth century, according to the historian 
of Dunstable, ''Towns were directed to erect 'a cage' near 
the meeting-house, and in this all offenders against the 
sanctity of the Sabbath were confined." Society has re- 
laxed a httle from its strictness, one would say, but I presume 
that there is not less religion than formerly. If the ligature 
is found to be loosened in one part, it is only drawn the 
tighter in another. 

You can hardly convince a man of an error in a life-time, 
but must content yourseK with the reflection that the progress 
of science is slow. If he is not convinced, his grand-children 
may be. The geologists tell us that it took one hundred 
years to prove that fossils are organic, and one hundred and 
fifty more, to prove that they are not to be referred to the 
Noachian deluge. I am not sure but I should betake myself 
in extremities to the liberal divinities of Greece, rather than 
to my country's God. Jehovah, though with us he has 
acquired new attributes, is more absolute and unapproach- 



44 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

able, but hardly more divine, than Jove. He is not so much 
of a gentleman, among gods, not so gracious and catholic, 
he does not exert so intimate and genial an influence on 
nature, as many a god of the Greeks. I should fear the 
infinite power and inflexible justice of the almighty mortal, 
hardly as yet apotheosized, so wholly mascuUne, with no 
sister Juno, no Apollo, no Venus, nor Minerva, to intercede for 
me, OvfxS <j>LX€ov(Td re, K-qSo/xivr] re. The Grecian are youth- 
ful and erring and fallen gods, with the vices of men, but in 
many important respects essentially of the divine race. In 
my Pantheon, Pan still reigns in his pristine glory, with his 
ruddy face, his flowing beard, and his shaggy body, his pipe 
and his crook, his nymph Echo, and his chosen daughter 
lambe ; for the great God Pan is not dead, as was rumored. 
Perhaps of all the gods of New England and of ancient 
Greece, I am most constant at his shrine. 

It seems to me that the god that is commonly worshipped 
in civilized countries is not at all divine, though he bears a 
divine name, but is the overwhelming authority and re- 
spectability of mankind combined. Men reverence one 
another, not yet God. If I thought that I could speak with 
discrimination and impartiality of the nations of Christendom, 
I should praise them, but it tasks me too much. They seem 
to be the most civil and humane, but I may be mistaken. 
Every people have gods to suit their circumstances; the 
Society Islanders had a god called Toahitu, "in shape hke 
a dog ; he saved such as were in danger of falling from rocks 
and trees." I think that we can do without him, as we have 
not much climbing to do. Among them a man could make 
himself a god out of a piece of wood in a few minutes, which 
would frighten him out of his wits. 

I fancy that some indefatigable spinster of the old school, 
who had the supreme fehcity to be born in "days that tried 
men's souls," hearing this, may say with Nestor, another of 
the old school, "But you are younger than I. For time was 
when I conversed with greater men than you. For not at 
any time have I seen such men nor shall see them, as Peri- 
thous, and Dryas, and noLfieva Aawi/," that is probably 
Washington, sole "Shepherd of the People." And when 
Apollo has now six times rolled westward, or seemed to roll, 
and now for the sixth time shows his face in the east, eyes 
well nigh glazed, long glassed, which have fluctuated only 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 45 

between lamb's wool and worsted, explore ceaselessly some 
good sermon book. For six days shalt thou labor and do all 
thy knitting, but on the seventh, forsooth thy reading. 
Happy we who can bask in this warm September sun, which 
illumines all creatures, as well when they rest as when they 
toil, not without a feehng of gratitude ; whose life is as blame- 
less, how blameworthy soever it may be, on the Lord's Mona- 
day as on his Suna-day. 

There are various, nay incredible faiths; why should we 
be alarmed at any of them? What man beheves, God be- 
lieves. Long as I have lived, and many blasphemers as I 
have* heard and seen, I have never yet heard or witnessed 
any direct and conscious blasphemy or irreverence ; but of 
indirect and habitual enough. Where is the man who is 
guilty of direct and personal insolence to Him that made 
him ? — Yet there are certain current expressions of blas- 
phemous modes of viewing things, — as, frequently, when 
we say, "He is doing a good business," — more profane than 
cursing and swearing. There is sin and death in such words. 
Let not the children hear them. — My neighbor says that 
his hill farm is "poor stuff," "only fit to hold the world to- 
gether," — and much more to that effect. He deserves 
that God should give him a better for so free a treating of 
his gifts, more than if he patiently put up therewith. But 
perhaps my farmer forgets that his lean soil has sharpened 
his wits. This is a crop it was good for. 

One memorable addition to the old mythology is due to 
this era, — the Christian fable. With what pains, and 
tears, and blood, these centuries have woven this and added 
it to the mythology of mankind. The new Prometheus. 
With what miraculous consent, and patience, and persist- 
ency, has this m3^thus been stamped upon the memory of 
the race? It would seem as if it were in the progress of our 
mythology to dethrone Jehovah, and crown Christ in his stead. 

If it is not a tragical life we Hve, then I know not what to 
call it. Such a story as that of Jesus Christ, — the history 
of Jerusalem, say, being a part of the Universal History. 
The naked, the embalmed, unburied death of Jerusalem amid 
its desolate hills, — think of it. In Tasso's poem I trust 
some things are sweetly buried. Consider the snappish 
tenacity with which they preach Christianity still. What 
are time and space to Christianity, eighteen hundred years, 



46 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

and a new world? — that the humble life of a Jewish peasant 
should have force to make a New York bishop so bigoted. 
Forty-four lamps, the gift of kings, now burning in a place 
called the Holy Sepulchre ; — a church bell ringing ; — some 
unaffected tears shed by a pilgrim on Mount Calvary within 
the week. — 

"Jerusalem, Jerusalem, when I forget thee, may my right 
hand forget her cunning." 

"By the waters of Babylon there we sat down, and we 
wept when we remembered Zion." 

I trust that some may be as near and dear to Buddha or 
Christ, or Swedenborg, who are without the pale of their 
churches. It is necessary not to be Christian, to appreciate 
the beauty and significance of the life of Christ. I know 
that some will have hard thoughts of me, when they hear 
their Christ named beside my Buddha, yet I am sure that 
I am willing they should love their Christ more than my 
Buddha, for the love is the main thing, and I Uke him too. 
Why need Christians be still intolerant and superstitious? 
The simple-minded sailors were unwilling to cast overboard 
Jonah at his own request. — 

"Where is this love become in later age? 
Alas ! 't is gone in endless pilgrimage 
From hence, and never to return, I doubt, 
Till revolution wheel those times about." 



One man says. 



"The world's a popular disease, that reigns 
Within the froward heart and frantic brains 
Of poor distempered mortals." 

Another that 

— "all the world's a stage. 
And all the men and women merely players." 

The world is a strange place for a play-house to stand within 
it. Old Drayton thought that a man that lived here, and 
would be a poet, for instance, should have in him certain 
"brave translunary things," and a "fine madness" should 
possess his brain. Certainly it were as well that he might 
be up to the occasion. That is a superfluous wonder, which 
Dr. Johnson expresses at the assertion of Sir Thomas Browne, 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 47 

that "his life has been a miracle of thirty years, which to 
relate, were not history, but a piece of poetry, and would 
sound Uke a fable." The wonder is rather that all men do 
not assert as much. 

Think what a mean and wretched place this world is; 
that half the time we have to light a lamp that we may see 
to Uve in it. This is half our Ufe. Who would undertake 
the enterprise if it were all? And, pray, what more has day 
to offer? A lamp that burns more clear, a purer oil, say 
winter-strained, that so we may pursue our idleness with 
less obstruction. Bribed with a little sunlight and a few 
prismatic tints, we bless our Maker, and stave off his wrath 
with hymns. 

I make ye an offer, 

Ye gods, hear the scoffer, 

The scheme will not hurt you, 

If ye will find goodness, I will find virtue. 

Though I am your creature. 

And child of your nature, 

I have pride still unbended, 

And blood undescended. 

Some free independence. 

And my own descendants. 

I cannot toil blindly, 

Though ye behave kindly, 

And I swear by the rood, 

I'll be slave to no God. 

If ye will deal plainly, 

I will strive mainly. 

If ye will discover. 

Great plans to your lover. 

And give him a sphere 

Somewhat larger than here. 

"Verily, my angels! I was abashed on account of my 
servant, who had no Providence but me; therefore did I 
pardon him." — The Gulistan of Sadi. 

Most people with whom I talk, men and women even of 
some originality and genius, have their scheme of the uni- 
verse all cut and dried, — very dry, I assure you, to hear, dry 
enough to burn, dry-rotted and powder-post, methinks, — 
which they set up between you and them in the shortest 
intercourse; an ancient and tottering frame with all its 



48 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

boards blown off. They do not walk without their bed. 
Some to me seemingly very unimportant and unsubstantial 
things and relations, are for them everlastingly settled, — 
as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, and the Hke. These are 
like the everlasting hills to them. But in all my wanderings, 
I never came across the least vestige of authority for these 
things. They have not left so distinct a trace as the deli- 
cate flower of a remote geological period on the coal in my 
grate. The wisest man preaches no doctrines; he has no 
scheme; he sees no rafter, not even a cobweb, against the 
heavens. It is clear sky. If I ever see more clearly at one 
time than at another, the medium through which I see is 
clearer. To see from earth to heaven, and see there standing, 
still a fixture, that old Jewish scheme! What right have 
you to hold up this obstacle to my understanding you, to 
your understanding me ! You did not invent it ; it was 
imposed on you. Examine your authority. Even Christ, 
we fear, had his scheme, his conformity to tradition, which 
shghtly vitiates his teaching. He had not swallowed all 
formulas. He preached some mere doctrines. As for me, 
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are now only the subtilest imagi- 
nable essences, which would not stain the morning sky. Your 
scheme must be the framework of the universe ; all other 
schemes will soon be ruins. The perfect God in his revela- 
tions of himself has never got to the length of one such propo- 
sition as you, his prophets, state. Have you learned the 
alphabet of heaven, and can count three? Do you know 
the number of God's family? Can you put mysteries into 
words? Do you presume to fable of the ineffable? Pray, 
what geographer are you, that speak of heaven's topography? 
Whose friend are you that speak of God's personality? Do 
you. Miles Howard, think that he has made you his con- 
fidant? Tell me of the height of the mountains of the moon, 
or of the diameter of space, and I may believe you, but of 
the secret history of the Almighty, and I shall pronounce 
thee mad. Yet we have a sort of family history of our God, 
— so have the Tahitians of theirs, — and some old poet's 
grand imagination is imposed on us as adamantine everlast- 
ing truth, and God's own word ! 

The New Testament is an invaluable book, though I 
confess to having been shghtly prejudiced against it in my 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 49 

very early days by the church and the Sabbath school, so 
that it seemed, before I read it, to be the yellowest book in 
the catalogue. Yet I early escaped from their meshes. It 
was hard to get the commentaries out of one's head, and 
taste its true flavor. — I think that Pilgrim's Progress is 
the best sermon which has been preached from this text; 
almost all other sermons that I have heard or heard of, have 
been but poor imitations of this. — It would be a poor story 
to be prejudiced against the Life of Christ, because the book 
has been edited by Christians. In fact, I love this book 
rarely, though it is a sort of castle in the air to me, which I 
am permitted to dream. Having come to it so recently and 
freshly, it has the greater charm, so that I cannot find any 
to taUi with about it. I never read a novel, they have so 
little real life and thought in them. The reading which I 
love best is the scriptures of the several nations, though it 
happens that I am better acquainted with those of the Hin- 
doos, the Chinese, and the Persians, than of the Hebrews, 
which I have come to last. Give me one of these Bibles, 
and you have silenced me for a while. When I recover the 
use of my tongue, I am wont to worry my neighbors with 
the new sentences, but commonly they cannot see that there 
is any wit in them. Such has been my experience with the 
New Testament. I have not yet got to the crucifixion, 
I have read it over so many times. I should love dearly to 
read it aloud to my friends, some of whom are seriously in- 
cUned; it is so good, and I am sure that they have never 
heard it, it fits their case exactly, and we should enjoy it so 
much together, — but I instinctively despair of getting their 
ears. They soon show, by signs not to be mistaken, that it 
is inexpressibly wearisome to them. I do not mean to imply 
that I am any better than my neighbors ; for, alas ! I know 
that I am only as good, though I love better books than they. 
It is remarkable, that notwithstanding the universal favor 
with which the New Testament is outwardly received, and 
even the bigotry with which it is defended, there is no hos- 
pitality shown to, there is no appreciation of, the order of 
truth with which it deals. I know of no book that has so 
few readers. There is none so truly strange, and heretical, 
and unpopular. To Christians, no less than Greeks and 
Jews, it is foolishness and a stumbhng block. There are, 
indeed, severe things in it which no man should read aloud 



50 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

but once. — "Seek first the kingdom of heaven." — "Lay 
not up for yourselves treasures on earth." — "If thou wilt 
be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, 
and thou shalt have treasure in heaven." — "For what is a 
man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his 
own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his 
soul?" — Think of this, Yankees! — "Verily I say unto 
you, if ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say 
unto this mountain. Remove hence to yonder place ; and it 
shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you." 
— Think of repeating these things to a New England audi- 
ence! thirdly, fourthly, fifteenthly, till there are three 
barrels of sermons ! Who, without cant, can read them aloud ? 
Who, without cant, can hear them, and not go out of the 
meeting-house? They never were read, they never were 
heard. Let but one of these sentences be rightly read from 
any pulpit in the land, and there would not be left one stone 
of that meeting-house upon another. 

Yet the New Testament treats of man and man's so-called 
spiritual affairs too exclusively, and is too constantly moral 
and personal, to alone content me, who am not interested 
solely in man's rehgious or moral nature, or in man even. 
I have not the most definite designs on the future. Abso- 
lutely speaking. Do unto others as you would that they should 
do unto you, is by no means a golden rule, but the best of 
current silver. An honest man would have but Httle oc- 
casion for it. It is golden not to have any rule at all in such 
a case. The book has never been written which is to be 
accepted without any allowance. Christ was a sublime 
actor on the stage of the world. He knew what he was 
thinking of when he said, "Heaven and earth shall pass 
away, but my words shall not pass away." I draw near to 
him at such a time. Yet he taught mankind but imperfectly 
how to live ; his thoughts were all directed toward another 
world. There is another kind of success than his. Even 
here we have a sort of hving to get, and must buffet it some- 
what longer. There are various tough problems yet to 
solve, and we must make shift to five, betwixt spirit and 
matter, such a human Ufe as we can. 

A healthy man, with steady employment, as wood chop- 
ping at fifty cents a cord, and a camp in the woods, will not 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 51 

be a good subject for Christianity. The New Testament 
may be a choice book to him on some, but not on all or most 
of his days. He will rather go a-fishing in his leisure hours. 
The apostles, though they were fishers too, were of the 
solemn race of sea-fishers, and never trolled for pickerel 
on inland streams. 

Men have a singular desire to be good without being good 
for anything, because, perchance, they think vaguely that 
so it will be good for them in the end. The sort of morality 
which the priest inculcates is a very subtle policy, far finer 
than the politicians', and the world is very successfully ruled 
by them as the poHcemen. It is not worth the while to let 
our imperfections disturb us always. The conscience really 
does not, and ought, not to, monopoUze the whole of our 
fives, any more than the heart or the head. It is as liable 
to disease as any other part. I have seen some whose con- 
sciences, owing undoubtedly to former indulgence, had 
grown to be as irritable as spoilt children, and at length gave 
them no peace. They did not know when to swallow their 
cud, and their lives of course yielded no milk. 



Conscience is instinct bred in the house. 

Feeling and Thinking propagate the sin 

By an unnatural breeding in and in. 

I say, Turn it out doors, 

Into the moors. 

I love a life whose plot is simple, 

And does not thicken with every pimple ; 

A soul so sound no sickly conscience binds it, 

That makes the universe no worse than 't finds it. 

I love an earnest soul, 

Whose mighty joy and sorrow 

Are not drowned in a bowl, 

And brought to life to-morrow ; 

That lives one tragedy, 

And not seventy ; 

A conscience worth keeping. 

Laughing not weeping ; 

A conscience wise and steady, 

And forever ready ; 

Not changing with events. 

Dealing in compfiments ; 

A conscience exercised about 

Large things, where one may doubt, 



52 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

I love a soul not all of wood, 

Predestinated to be good, 

But true to the backbone 

Unto itself alone, 

And false to none ; 

Born to its own affairs, 

Its own joys and own cares ; 

By whom the work which God begun 

Is finished, and not undone ; 

Taken up where he left off. 

Whether to worship or to scoff ; 

If not good, why then evil, 

If not good god, good devil. 

Goodness ! — you hypocrite, come out of that, 

Live your life, do your work, then take your hat. 

I have no patience towards 

Such conscientious cowards. 

Give me simple laboring folk, 

Who love their work. 

Whose virtue is a song 

To cheer God along. 

I was once reproved by a minister who was driving a poor 
beast to some meeting-house horse-sheds among the hills of 
New Hampshire, because I was bending my steps to a moun- 
tain-top on the Sabbath, instead of a church, when I would 
have gone further than he to hear a true word spoken on 
that or any day. He declared that I was "breaking the 
Lord's fourth commandment," and proceeded to enumerate, 
in a sepulchral tone, the disasters which had befallen him 
whenever he had done any ordinary work on the Sabbath. 
He really thought that a god was at work to trip up those 
men who followed any secular work on this day, and did not 
see that it was the evil conscience of the workers that did it. 
The country is full of this superstition, so that when one 
enters a village, the church, not only really but from associa- 
tion, is the ugliest looking building in it, because it is the one 
in which human nature stoops the lowest and is most dis- 
graced. Certainly, such temples as these shall ere long cease 
to deform the landscape. 

If I should ask the minister of Middlesex to let me speak 
in his pulpit on a Sunday, he would object, because I do not 
pray as he does, or because I am not ordained. What under 
\the sun are these things? 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 53 

Really, there is no infidelity, now-a-days, so great as that 
which prays, and keeps the Sabbath, and rebuilds the churches. 
The sealer of the South Pacific preaches a truer doctrine. 
The church is a sort of hospital for men's souls, and as full of 
quackery as the hospital for their bodies. Those who are 
taken into it hve like pensioners in their Retreat or Sailor's. 
Snug Harbor, where you may see a row of rehgious cripples 
sitting outside in sunny weather. Let not the apprehension 
that he may one day have to occupy a ward therein dis- 
courage the cheerful labors of the able-souled man. While 
he remembers the sick in their extremities, let him not look 
thither as to his goal. One is sick at heart of this pagoda 
worship. It is hke the beating of gongs in a Hindoo sub- 
terranean temple. In dark places and dungeons the 
preacher's words might perhaps strike root and grow, but 
not in broad daylight in any part of the world that I know. 
The sound of the Sabbath bell far away, now breaking on 
these shores, does not awaken pleasing associations, but 
melancholy and sombre ones rather. One involuntarily 
rests on his oar, to humor his unusually meditative mood. 
It is as the sound of many catechisms and religious books 
twanging a canting peal round the earth, seeming to issue 
from some Egyptian temple and echo along the shore of 
the Nile, right opposite to Pharaoh's palace and Moses in 
the bulrushes, startling a multitude of storks and alligators 
basking in the sun. 

Everywhere ''good men" sound a retreat, and the word 
has gone forth to fall back on innocence. Fall forward 
rather on to whatever there is there. Christianity only 
hopes. It has hung its harp on the willows, and cannot sing 
a song in a strange land. It has dreamed a sad dream, and 
does not yet welcome the morning with joy. The mother 
tells her falsehoods to her child, but thank Heaven, the child 
does not grow up in its parent's shadow. Our mother's 
faith has not grown with her experience. Her experience 
has been too much for her. The lesson of life was too hard 
for her to learn. 

It is remarkable, that almost all speakers and writers feel 
it to be incumbent on them, sooner or later, to prove or to 
acknowledge the personality of God. Some Earl of Bridge- 
water, thinking it better late than never, has provided for 
it in his will. It is a sad mistake. In reading a work oa 



54 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

agriculture, we have to skip the author's moral reflections, 
and the words "Providence" and "He" scattered along the 
page, to come at the profitable level of what he has to say. 
What he calls his reUgion is for the most part offensive to 
the nostrils. He should know better than expose himself, 
and keep his foul sores covered till they are quite healed. 
There is more religion in men's science than there is science 
in their religion. Let us make haste to the report of the 
committee on swine. 

A man's real faith is never contained in his creed, nor is 
his creed an article of his faith. The last is never adopted. 
This it is that permits him to smile ever, and to live even as 
bravely as he does. And yet he clings anxiously to his creed, 
as to a straw, thinking that that does him good service be- 
cause his sheet anchor does not drag. 

In most men's rehgion, the Hgature, which should be its 
umbilical cord connecting them with divinity, is rather Uke 
that thread which the accomplices of Cylon held in their 
hands when they went abroad from the temple of Minerva, 
the other end being attached to the statue of the goddess. 
But frequently, as in their case, the thread breaks, being 
stretched, and they are left without an asylum. 

"A good and pious man reclined his head on the bosom of 
contemplation, and was absorbed in the ocean of a revery. 
At the instant when he awaked from his vision, one of his 
friends, by way of pleasantry, said: What rare gift have 
you brought us from that garden, where you have been rec- 
reating? He replied; I fancied to myself and said, when 
I can reach the rose-bower, I will fill my lap with the flowers, 
and bring them as a present to my friends ; but when I got 
there, the fragrance of the roses so intoxicated me, that the 
skirt dropped from my hands. — ' O bird of dawn ! learn 
the warmth of affection from the moth; for that scorched 
creature gave up the ghost, and uttered not a groan : These 
vain pretenders are ignorant of him they seek after ; for of 
him that knew him we never heard again : — O thou ! who 
towerest above the flights of conjecture, opinion, and com- 
prehension; whatever has been reported of thee we have 
heard and read ; the congregation is dismissed, and life drawn 
to a close ; and we still rest at our first encomium of thee !'" 
— Sadi. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 55 

By noon we were let down into the Merrimack through the 
locks at Middlesex, just above Pawtucket Falls, by a serene 
and hberal-minded man, who came quietly from his book, 
though his duties, we supposed, did not require him to open 
the locks on Sundays. With him we had a just and equal 
encounter of the eyes, as between two honest men. 

The movements of the eyes express the perpetual and un- 
conscious courtesy of the parties. It is said that a rogue 
does not look you in the face, neither does an honest man 
look at you as if he had his reputation to establish. I have 
seen some who did not know when to turn aside their eyes in 
meeting youi-s. A truly confident and magnanimous spirit 
is wiser than to contend for the mastery in such en- 
counters. Serpents alone conquer by the steadiness of their 
gaze. My friend looks me in the face and sees me, that 
is all. 

The best relations were at once estabhshed between us 
and this man, and though few words were spoken, he could 
not conceal a visible interest in us and our excursion. He 
was a lover of the higher mathematics, as we found, and in 
the midst of some vast sunny problem, when we overtook 
him and whispered our conjectures. By this man we were 
presented with the freedom of the Merrimack. We now 
felt as if we were fairly launched on the ocean-stream of our 
voyage, and were pleased to find that our boat would float 
on Merrimack water. We began again busily to put in 
practice those old arts of rowing, steering, and paddling. It 
seemed a strange phenomenon to us that the two rivers should 
mingle their waters so readily, since we had never associated 
them in our thoughts. 

As we glided over the broad bosom of the Merrimack, 
between Chelmsford and Dracut, at noon, here a quarter of 
a mile wide, the rattling of our oars was echoed over the 
water to those villages, and their shght sounds to us. Their 
harbors lay as smooth and fairy-like as the Lido, or Syracuse, 
or Rhodes, in our imagination, while, like some strange 
roving craft, we flitted past what seemed the dwellings of 
noble home-staying men, seemingly as conspicuous as if 
on an eminence, or floating upon a tide which came up to 
those villagers' breasts. At a third of a mile over the water 
we heard distinctly some children repeating their catechism 
in a cottage near the shore, while in the broad shallows 



56 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

between, a herd of cows stood lashing their sides, and waging 
war with the flies. 

Two hundred years ago other catechising than this was 
going on here ; for here came the sachem Wannalancet, and 
his people, and sometimes Tahatawan, our Concord Sachem, 
who afterwards had a church at home, to catch fish at the 
falls ; and here also came John Elliot, with the Bible and 
Catechism and Baxter's Call to the Unconverted, and other 
tracts, done into the Massachusetts tongue, and taught them 
Christianity meanwhile. ''This place," says Gookin, re- 
ferring to Wamesit, 

"being an ancient and capital seat of Indians, they come to 
fish ; and this good man takes this opportunity to spread the 
net of the gospel, to fish for their souls." — "May 5th, 1674," 
he continues, "according to our usual custom, Mr. Eliot and 
myself took our journey to Wamesit, or Pawtuckett; and 
arriving there that evening, Mr. Eliot preached to as many 
of them as could be got together, out of Matt. xxii. 1-14, 
the parable of the marriage of the king's son. We met at 
the wigwam of one called Wannalancet, about two miles 
from the town, near Pawtuckett falls, and bordering upon 
Merrimak river. This person, Wannalancet, is the eldest 
son of old Pasaconaway, the chiefest sachem of Pawtuckett. 
He is a sober and grave person, and of years, between fifty 
and sixty. He hath been always loving and friendly to the 
English." As yet, however, they had not prevailed on him 
to embrace the Christian religion. "But at this time," says 
Gookin, "May 6, 1674," — "after some deliberation and 
serious pause, he stood up, and made a speech to this effect : 
— *I must acknowledge I have, all my days, used to pass in 
an old canoe, (alluding to his frequent custom to pass in a 
canoe upon the river) and now you exhort me to change and 
leave my old canoe, and embark in a new canoe, to which 
I have hitherto been unwilling; but now I yield up myself 
to your advice, and enter into a new canoe, and do engage to 
pray to God hereafter.'" One "Mr. Richard Daniel, a 
gentleman that lived in Billerica," who with other "persons 
of quality" was present, "desired brother Eliot to tell the 
sachem from him, that it may be, while he went in his old 
canoe, he passed in a quiet stream ; but the end thereof was 
death and destruction to soul and body. But now he went 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 57 

into a new canoe, perhaps he would meet with storms and 
trials, but yet he should be encouraged to persevere, for the 
end of his voyage would be everlasting rest." — "Since that, 
time, I hear this sachem doth persevere, and is a constant 
and diligent hearer of God's word, and sanctifieth the Sabbath,, 
though he doth travel to Wamesit meeting every Sabbath,, 
which is above two miles ; and though sundry of his people 
have deserted him, since he subjected to the gospel, yet he 
continues and persists." ^ 

Already, as appears from the records, "At a General Court- 
held at Boston in New England, the 7th of the first month, 
1643-4." — "Wassamequin, Nashoonon, Kutchamaquin, 
Massaconomet, and Squaw Sachem, did voluntarily submit 
themselves" to the English; and among other things did 
"promise to be willing from time to time to be instructed 
in the knowledge of God." Being asked "Not to do any 
unnecessary work on the Sabbath day, especially within the 
gates of Christian towns," they answered, "It is easy to 
them ; they have not much to do on any day, and they can 
well take their rest on that day." — "So," says Winthrop, 
in his Journal, "we causing them to understand the articles, 
and all the ten commandments of God, and they freely 
assenting to all, they were solemnly received, and then pre- 
sented the Court with twenty-six fathom more of wampom ; 
and the Court gave each of them a coat of two yards of cloth, 
and their dinner ; and to them and their men, every of them, 
a cup of sack at their departure ; and so they took leave and 
went away." 

What journeying on foot and on horseback through the 
wilderness, to preach the gospel to these minks and musk- 
rats ! who first, no doubt, listened with their red ears out of a 
natural hospitality and courtesy, and afterward from curi^ 
osity or even interest, till at length there were "praying 
Indians," and, as the General Court wrote to Cromwell, 
the "work is brought to this perfection, that some of the 
Indians themselves can pray and prophesy in a comfortable 
manner." 

It was in fact an old battle and hunting ground through 
which we had been floating, the ancient dwelling-place of a 
race of hunters and warriors. Their weirs of stone, their- 

^Gookin's Hist. Coll. of the Indians in New England, 1674. 



58 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

arrowheads and hatchets, their pestles, and the mortars in 
which they pounded Indian corn before the white man had 
tasted it, lay concealed in the mud of the river bottom. 
Tradition still points out the spots where they took fish in 
the greatest numbers, by such arts as they possessed. It is a 
rapid story the historian will have to put together. Mian- 
tonimo, — Winthrop, — Webster. Soon he comes from 
Mount Hope to Bunker Hill, from bear-skins, parched corn, 
bows and arrows, to tiled roofs, wheat fields, guns and swords. 
Pawtucket and Wamesit, where the Indians resorted in the 
fishing season, are now Lowell, the city of spindles, and 
Manchester of America, which sends its cotton cloth round 
the globe. Even we youthful voyagers had spent a part of 
our lives in the village of Chelmsford, when the present city, 
whose bells we heard, was its obscure north district only, 
and the giant weaver was not yet fairly born. So old are 
we ; so young is it. 

We were thus entering the State of New Hampshire on 
the bosom of the flood formed by the tribute of its innumer- 
able valleys. The river was the only key which could unlock 
its maze, presenting its hills and valleys, its lakes and streams, 
in their natural order and position. The Merrimack, or 
Sturgeon River, is formed by the confluence of the Pemi- 
gewasset, which rises near the Notch of the White Mountains, 
and the Winnepisiogee, which drains the lake of the same 
name, signifying "The Smile of the Great Spirit." From 
their junction it runs south seventy-eight miles to Massa- 
chusetts, and thence east thirty-five miles to the sea. I 
have traced its stream from where it bubbles out of the rocks 
of the White Mountains above the clouds, to where it is lost 
amid the salt billows of the ocean on Plum Island beach. At 
first it comes on murmuring to itself by the base of stately 
and retired mountains, through moist primitive woods whose 
juices it receives, where the bear still drinks it, and the cabins 
of settlers are far between, and there are few to cross its 
stream; enjoying in solitude its cascades still unknown to 
fame ; by long ranges of mountains of Sandwich and of Squam, 
slumbering like tumuli of Titans, with the peaks of Mosse- 
hillock, the Haystack, and Kearsarge reflected in its waters ; 
where the maple and the raspberry, those lovers of the hills, 
flourish amid temperate dews ; — flowing long and full of 
meaning, but untranslatable as its name Pemigewasset, by 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 59 

many a pastured Pelion and Ossa, where unnamed muses 
haunt, tended by Oreads, Dryads, Naiads, and receiving the 
tribute of many an untasted Hippocrene. There are earth, 
air, fire, and water, — very well, this is water, and down it 
comes. 

Such water do the gods distil, 

And pour down every hill 
For their New England men ; 

A draught of this wild nectar bring, 

And I'll not taste the spring 
Of Helicon again. 

Falling all the way, and yet not discouraged by the lowest 
fall. By the law of its birth never to become stagnant, for 
it has come out of the clouds, and down the sides of preci- 
pices worn in the flood, through beaver dams broke loose, 
not splitting but splicing and mending itself, until it found 
a breathing place in this low land. There is no danger now 
that the sun will steal it back to heaven again before it reach 
the sea, for it has a warrant even to recover its own dews 
into its bosom again with interest at every eve. 

It was already the water of Squam and Newfound Lake 
and Winnepisiogee, and White Mountain snow dissolved, 
on which we were floating, and Smith's and Baker's and Mad 
rivers, and Nashua and Souhegan and Piscataquoag, and 
Suncook and Soucook and Contoocook, mingled in incal- 
culable proportions, still fluid, yellowish, restless all, with 
an ancient, ineradicable inclination to the sea. 

So it flows on down by Lowell and Haverhill, at which 
last place it first suffers a sea change, and a few masts betray 
the vicinity of the ocean. Between the towns of Amesbury 
and Newbury it is a broad commercial river, from a third to 
half a mile in width, no longer skirted with yellow and crum- 
bling banks, but backed by high green hills and pastures, with 
frequent white beaches on wliich the fishermen draw up their 
nets. I have passed down this portion of the river in a steam- 
boat, and it was a pleasant sight to watch from its deck the 
fishermen dragging their seines on the distant shore, as in 
pictures of a foreign strand. At intervals you may meet 
with a schooner laden with lumber, standing up to Haverhill, 
or else lying at anchor or aground, waiting for wind or tide ; 
until, at last, you glide under the famous Chain Bridge, and 
are landed at Newburyport. Thus she who at first was 



60 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

*'poore of waters, naked of renowne," having received so 
many fair tributaries, as was said of the Forth, 

"Doth grow the greater still, the further downe; 
Till that abounding both in power and fame. 
She long doth strive to give the sea her name;" 

or if not her name, in this case, at least the impulse of her 
stream. From the steeples of Newburyport, you may review 
this river stretching far up into the country, with many a 
white sail glancing over it like an inland sea, and behold, 
as one wrote who was born on its head-waters, ''Down out 
at its mouth, the dark inky main blending with the blue above. 
Plum Island, its sand ridges scolloping along the horizon like 
the sea serpent, and the distant outline broken by many a 
tall ship, leaning, still, against the sky." 

Rising at an equal height with the Connecticut, the Merri- 
mack reaches the sea by a course only half as long, and hence 
has no leisure to form broad and fertile meadows like the 
former, but is hurried along rapids, and down numerous falls 
without long delay. The banks are generally steep and 
high, with a narrow interval reaching back to the hills, which 
is only occasionally and partially overflown at present, and 
is much valued by the farmers. Between Chelmsford and 
Concord in New Hampshire, it varies from twenty to seventy- 
five rods in width. It is probably wider than it was formerly, 
in many places, owing to the trees having been cut down, 
and the consequent wasting away of its banks. The influence 
of the Pawtucket dam is felt as far up as Cromwell's Falls, 
and many think that the banks are being abraded and the 
river filled up again by this cause. Like all our rivers, it is 
liable to freshets, and the Pemigewasset has been known to 
rise twenty-five feet in a few hours. It is navigable for 
vessels of burden about twenty miles, for canal boats by 
means of locks as far as Concord in New Hampshire, about 
seventy-five miles from its mouth, and for smaller boats to 
Plymouth, one hundred and thirteen miles. A smaU steam- 
boat once plied between Lowell and Nashua, before the rail- 
road was built, and one now runs from Newburyport to 
Haverhill. 

Unfitted to some extent for the purposes of commerce by 
the sand-bar at its mouth, see how this river was devoted 
from the first to the service of manufactures. Issuing from 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 61 

the iron region of Franconia, and flowing through still uncut 
forests, by inexhaustible ledges of granite, with Squam, and 
Winnepisiogee, and Newfound, and Massabesic lakes for 
its millponds, it falls over a succession of natural dams, 
where it has been offering its privileges in vain for ages, until 
at last the Yankee race came to improve them. Standing 
here at its mouth, look up its sparkling stream to its source, 
— a silver cascade which falls all the way from the White 
Mountains to the sea, — and behold a city on each successive 
plateau, a busy colony of human beaver around every fall. 
Not to mention Newburyport and Haverhill, see Lawrence, 
and Lowell, and Nashua, and Manchester, and Concord, 
gleaming one above the other. When at length it has es- 
caped from under the last of the factories it has a level and 
unmolested passage to the sea, a mere waste water, as it were, 
bearing little with it but its fame; its pleasant course re- 
vealed by the morning fog which hangs over it, and the sails 
of the few small vessels which transact the commerce of 
Haverhill and Newburyport. But its real vessels are rail- 
road cars, and its true and main stream, flowing by an iron 
channel further south, may be traced by a long line of vapor 
amid the hills, which no morning wind ever disperses, to 
where it empties into the sea at Boston. This side is the 
louder murmur now. Instead of the scream of a fish-hawk 
scaring the fishes, is heard the whistle of the steam-engine, 
arousing a country to its progress. 

This river too was at length discovered by the white man, 
"trending up into the land," he knew not how far, possibly 
an inlet to the South Sea. Its valley, as far as the Winne- 
pisiogee, was first surveyed in 1652. The first settlers of 
Massachusetts supposed that the Connecticut, in one part 
of its course, ran north-west, ''so near the great lake as the 
Indians do pass their canoes into it over land." From which 
lake and the ''hideous swamps" about it, as they supposed, 
came all the beaver that was traded between Virginia and 
Canada, — and the Potomac was thought to come out of 
or from very near it. Afterward the Connecticut came so 
near the course Of the Merrimack, that with a little pains 
they expected to divert the current of the trade into the latter 
river, and its profits from their Dutch neighbors into their 
own pockets. 

Unlike the Concord, the Merrimack is not a dead but a 



62 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

living stream, though it has less life within its waters and on 
its banks. It has a swift current, and, in this part of its 
course, a clayey bottom, almost no weeds, and comparatively 
few fishes. We looked down into its yellow water with the 
more curiosity, who were accustomed to the Nile-like black- 
ness of the former river. Shad and ale wives are taken here 
in their season, but salmon, though at one time more numerous 
than shad, are now more rare. Bass, also, are taken occa- 
sionally ; but locks and dams have proved more or less de- 
structive to the fisheries. The shad make their appearance 
early in May, at the same time with the blossoms of the 
pyrus, one of the most conspicuous early flowers, which is 
for this reason called the shad-blossom. An insect, called 
the shad-fly, also appears at the same time, covering the 
houses and fences. We are told that "their greatest run is 
when the apple trees are in full blossom. The old shad re- 
turn in August; the young, three or four inches long, in 
September. These are very fond of flies." A rather pictur- 
esque and luxurious mode of fishing was formerly practised 
on the Connecticut, at Bellows Falls, where a large rock 
divides the stream. "On the steep sides of the island rock," 
says Belknap, "hang several arm chairs, fastened to ladders, 
and secured by a counterpoise, in which fishermen sit to 
catch salmon and shad with dipping nets." The remains of 
Indian weirs, made of large stones, are still to be seen in the 
Winnepisiogee, one of the head-waters of this river. 

It cannot but affect our philosophy favorably to be re- 
minded of these shoals of migratory fishes, of salmon, shad, 
alewives, marsh-bankers, and others, which penetrate up 
the innumerable rivers of our coast in the spring, even to the 
interior lakes, their scales gleaming in the sun ; and again, 
of the fry, which in still greater numbers wend their way 
downward to the sea. "Arid is it not pretty sport," wrote 
Capt. John Smith, who was on this coast as early as 1614, 
"to pull up twopence, sixpence, and twelvepence, as fast as 
you can haul and veer a line?" — "And what sport doth 
yield a more pleasing content, and less hurt or charge, than 
angling with a hook, and crossing the sweet air from isle to 
isle, over the silent streams of a calm sea." 

On the sandy shore, opposite the Glass-house village in 
Chelmsford, at the Great Bend, where we landed to rest us 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 63 

and gather a few wild plums, we discovered the campanula 
rotundifoUa, a new flower to us, the harebell of the poets, 
which is common to both hemispheres, growing close to the 
water. Here, in the shady branches of an apple tree on the 
sand, we took our nooning, where there was not a zephyr 
to disturb the repose of this glorious Sabbath day, and we 
reflected serenely on the long past and successful labors of 
Latona. 

"So silent is the cessile air, 
That every cry and call, 
The hills and dales, and forest fair. 
Again repeats them all. 

"The herds beneath some leafy trees, 
Amidst the flowers they lie, 
The stable ships upon the seas 
Tend up their sails to dry." 

As we thus rested in the shade, or rowed leisurely along, 
we had recourse, from time to time, to the Gazetteer, which 
was our Navigator, and from its bald natural facts extracted 
the pleasure of poetry. Beaver river comes in a little lower 
down, draining the meadows of Pelham, Windham, and Lon- 
donderry. The Scotch-Irish settlers of the latter town, 
according to this authoritj^, were the first to introduce the 
potato into New England, as well as the manufacture of 
linen cloth. 

Everything that is printed and bound in a book contains 
some echo at least of the best that is in Hterature. Indeed, 
the best books have a use Hke sticks and stones, which is 
above or beside their design, not anticipated in the preface, 
nor concluded in the appendix. Even Virgil's poetry serves 
a very different use to me to-day from what it did to his 
contemporaries. It has often an acquired and accidental 
value merely, pro\dng that man is still man in the world. 
It is pleasant to meet with such still lines as, 

"Jam laeto turgent in palmite gemmae ;" 
Now the buds swell on the joyful stem ; 
or 

"Strata jacent passim sua quseque sub arbore poma." 
The apples lie scattered everywhere, each under its tree. 



64 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

In an ancient and dead language, any recognition of living 
nature attracts us. These are such sentences as were written 
while grass grew and water ran. It is no small recommenda- 
tion when a book will stand the test of mere unobstructed 
sunshine and dayUght. 

What would we not give for some great poem to read now, 
which would be in harmony with the scenery, — for if men 
read aright, methinks they would never read anything but 
poems. No history nor philosophy can supply their place. 

The wisest definition of poetry the poet will instantly 
prove false by setting aside its requisitions. We can, there- 
fore, publish only our advertisement of it. 

There is no doubt that the loftiest written wisdom is 
either rhymed, or in some way musically measured, — is, 
in form as well as substance, poetry; and a volume which 
should contain the condensed wisdom of mankind, need not 
ha^^e one rhythmless line. 

Yet poetry, though the last and finest result, is a natural 
fruit. As naturally as the oak bears an acorn, and the vine 
a gourd, man bears a poem, either spoken or done. It is 
the chief and most memorable success, for history is but 
a prose narrative of poetic deeds. What else have the Hin- 
doos, the Persians, the Babylonians, the Egyptians done, 
that can be told? It is the simplest relation of phenomena, 
and describes the commonest sensations with more truth 
than science does, and the latter at a distance slowly mimics 
its style and methods. The poet sings how the blood flows 
in his veins. He performs his functions, and is so well that 
he needs such stimulus to sing only as plants to put forth 
leaves and blossoms. He would strive in vain to modulate 
the remote and transient music which he sometimes hears, 
since his song is a vital function like breathing, and an integral 
result like weight. It is not the overflowing of life but of its 
subsidence rather, and is drawn from under the feet of the 
poet. It is enough if Homer but say the sun sets. He is 
as serene as nature, and we can hardly detect the enthusiasm 
of the bard. It is as if nature spoke. He presents to us the 
simplest pictures of human life, so that childhood itseK can 
understand them, and the man must not think twice to appre- 
ciate his naturalness. Each reader discovers for himself, 
that, with respect to the simpler features of nature, succeed- 
ilig poets have done little else than copy his similes. His 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 65 

more memorable passages are as naturally bright, as gleams 
of sunshine in misty weather. Nature furnishes him not 
only with words, but with stereotyped lines and sentences 
from her mint. 

"As from the clouds appears the full moon, 
All shining, and then again it goes behind the shadowy clouds. 
So Hector, at one time appeared among the foremost, 
And at another in the rear, commanding ; and all with brass 
He shone, like to the hghtning of aegis-bearing Zeus." 

'' He conveys the least information, even the hour of the day, 
with such magnificence and vast expense of natural imagery, 
as if it were a message from the gods. 

** While it was dawn, and sacred day was advancing. 
For that space the weapons of both flew fast, and the people fell ; 
But when now the woodcutter was preparing his morning meal, 
In the recesses of the mountain, and had wearied his hands 
With cutting lofty trees, and satiety came to his mind, 
And the desire of sweet food took possession of his thoughts ; 
Then the Danaans, by their valor, broke the phalanxes, 
Shouting to their companions from rank to rank." 

When the army of the Trojans passed the night under 
arms, keeping watch lest the enemy should re-embark under 
cover of the dark, 

"They, thinking great things, upon the neutral ground of war 
Sat all the night ; and many fires burned for them. 
As when in the heavens the stars round the bright moon 
Appear beautiful, and the air is without wind ; 
And all the heights, and the extreme summits. 
And the wooded sides of the mountains appear ; and from the 

heavens an infinite ether is diffused. 
And all the stars are seen ; and the shepherd rejoices in his heart ; 
So between the ships and the streams of Xanthus 
Appeared the fires of the Trojans before Ihum. 
A thousand fires burned on the plain ; and by each 
Sat fifty, in the light of the blazing fire ; 
And horses eating white barley and corn. 
Standing by the chariots, awaited fair-throned Aurora." 

The "white-armed goddess Juno," sent by the Father of 
gods and men for Iris and Apollo, 



66 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

"Went down the Idaean mountains to far Olympus, 
As when the mind of a man, who has come over much earth, 
SaUies forth, and he reflects with rapid thoughts, 
There was I, and there, and remembers many things ; 
So swiftly the august Juno hastening flew through the air, 
And came to high Olympus. " 

His scenery is always true, and not invented. He does 
not leap in imagination from Asia to Greece, through mid air, 

iirci^ fidXa iroWd, jxera^i 



Ovped T€ cTKio^PTa, daXda-aa re '^xijeo'cra. 
for there are very many 
I Shady mountains and resounding seas between. 

If his messengers repair but to the tent of Achilles, we do 
not wonder how they got there, but accompany them step 
by step along the shore of the resounding sea. Nestor's 
account of the march of the Pylians against the Epeians 
is extremely lifelike : — • 

"Then rose up to them sweet-worded Nestor, the shrill orator 
of the Pylians, 
And words sweeter than honey flowed from his tongue." 

This time, however, he addresses Patroclus alone. — "A 
certain river, Minyas by name, leaps seaward near to Arene, 
where we Pylians wait the dawn, both horse and foot. Thence 
with all haste we sped as on the morrow ere 't was noon-day, 
accoutred for the fight, even to Alpheus' sacred source, &c.'' 
We fancy that we hear the subdued murmuring of the Minyas 
discharging its waters into the main the livelong night, and 
the hollow sound of the waves breaking on the shore, — until 
at length we are cheered at the close of a toilsome march 
by the gurgling fountains of Alpheus. 

There are few books which are fit to be remembered in 
our wisest hours, but the Ifiad is brightest in the serenest 
days, and embodies still all the sunlight that fell on Asia 
Minor. No modern joy or ecstasy of ours can lower its 
height, or dim its lustre, but there it lies in the east of liter- 
ature, as it were the earliest and latest production of the 
mind. The ruins of Egypt oppress and stifle us with their 
dust, foulness preserved in cassia and pitch, and swathed 
in linen ; the death of that which never lived. But the rays 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 67 

of Greek poetry struggle down to us, and mingle with the 
sunbeams of the recent day. The statute of Memnon is 
cast down, but the shaft of the lUad still meets the sun in his 
rising. — I 

" Homer is gone ; and where is Jove ? and where 
The rival cities seven? His song outlives 
Time, tower, and god, — all that then was save Heaven." 

So too, no doubt. Homer had his Homer, and Orpheus 
his Orpheus, in the dim antiquity which preceded them. 
The mythological system of the ancients, — and it is still the 
mythology of the moderns, the poem of mankind, — inter- 
woven so wonderfully with their astronomy, and matching in 
grandeur and harmony the architecture of the heavens 
themselves, seems to point to a time when a mightier geniua 
inhabited the earth. But after all, man is the great poet, 
and not Homer or Shakspeare; and our language itself, 
and the common arts of hfe are his work. Poetry is so uni- 
versally true and independent of experience, that it does not 
need any particular biography to illustrate it, but we refer 
it sooner or later to some Orpheus or Linus, and after ages 
to the genius of humanity, and the gods themselves. 

It would be worth the while to select our reading, for books 
are the society we keep ; to read only the serenely true ; never 
statistics, nor fiction, nor news, nor reports, nor periodicals, 
but only great poems, and when they failed, read them again, 
or perchance write more. Instead of other sacrifice, we 
might offer up our perfect (reAcia) thoughts to the gods 
daily, in hymns or psalms. For we should be at the helm 
at least once a day. The whole of the day should not be day- 
time ; there should be one hour, if no more, which the day 
did not bring forth. Scholars are wont to sell their birth- 
right for a mess of learning. But is it necessary to know 
what the speculator prints, or the thoughtless study, or the 
idle read, the Hterature of the Russians and the Chinese, or 
even French philosophy and much of German criticism? 
Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to 
read them at all. "There are the worshippers with offerings, 
and the worshippers with mortifications; and again the 
worshippers with enthusiastic devotion; so there are those, 
the wisdom of whose reading is their worship, men of subdued 



68 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

passions, and severe manners ; — This world is not for him 
who doth not worship; and where, O Arjoon, is there 
another?" Certainly, we do not need to be soothed and 
entertained always like children. He who resorts to the 
easy novel, because he is languid, does no better than if he 
took a nap. The front aspect of great thoughts can only 
be enjoyed by those who stand on the side whence they 
arrive. Books, not which afford us a cowering enjoyment, 
but in which each thought is of unusual daring ; such as an 
idle man cannot read, and a timid one would not be enter- 
tained by, which even make us dangerous to existing institu- 
tions, — such call I good books. 

All that are printed and bound are not books ; they do not 
necessarily belong to letters, but are oftener to be ranked 
with the other luxuries and appendages of civiUzed life. 
Base wares are palmed off under a thousand disguises. "The 
way to trade," as a pedler once told me, "is to put it right 
through,'^ no matter what it is, anything that is agreed on. — 

" You grov'Ling worldlings, you whose wisdom trades 
Where light ne'er shot his golden ray." 

By dint of able writing and pen-craft, books are cunningly 
compiled, and have their run and success even among the 
learned, as if they were the result of a new man's thinking, 
and their birth were attended with some natural throes. 
But in a little while their covers fall off, for no binding will 
avail, and it appears that they are not Books or Bibles at 
all. There are new and patented inventions in this shape, 
purporting to be for the elevation of the race, which many 
a pure scholar and genius who has learned to read is for a 
moment deceived by, and finds himself reading a horse-rake, 
or spinning jenny, or wooden nutmeg, or oak-leaf cigar, or 
steampower press, or kitchen range, perchance, when he was 
seeking serene and biblical truths. — 

"Merchants, arise. 
And mingle conscience with your merchandise." 

Paper is cheap, and authors need not now erase one book be- 
fore they write another. Instead of cultivating the earth 
for wheat and potatoes, they cultivate literature, and fill a 
place in the Republic of Letters. Or they would fain write 
for fame merely, as others actually raise crops of grain to 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 69 

be distilled into brandy. Books are for the most part wil- 
fully and hastily written, as parts of a system, to supply a 
want real or imagined. Books of natural history aim com- 
monly to be hasty schedules, or inventories of God's prop- 
erty, by some clerk. They do not in the least teach the divine 
view of nature, but the popular view, or rather the popular 
method of studying nature, and make haste to conduct the 
persevering pupil only into that dilemma where the professors 
always dwell. — 

"To Athens gown'd he goes, and from that school 
Returns unsped, a more instructed fool." 

They teach the elements really of ignorance, not of knowledge, 
for to speak deliberately and in view of the highest truths, 
it is not easy to distinguish elementary knowledge. There 
is a chasm between knowledge and ignorance which the arches 
of science can never span. A book should contain pure 
discoveries, glimpses of terra firma, though by shipwrecked 
mariners, and not the art of navigation by those who have 
never been out of sight of land. They must not jdeld wheat 
and potatoes, but must themselves be the unconstrained and 
natural harvest of their author's lives. — 

"What I have learned is mine ; I've had my thought, 
And me the Muses noble truths have taught." 

We do not learn much from learned books, but from true, 
sincere, human books, from frank and honest biographies. 
The life of a good man will hardly improve us more than the 
life of a freebooter, for the inevitable laws appear as plainly 
in the infringement as in the observance, and our lives are 
sustained by a nearly equal expense of virtue of some kind. 
The decaying tree, while yet it lives, demands sun, wind, 
and rain no less than the green one. It secretes sap and 
performs the functions of health. If we choose, we may 
study the alburnum only. The gnarled stump has as tender 
a bud as the sapling. 

At least let us have healthy books, a stout horse-rake or a 
kitchen range which is not cracked. Let not the poet shed 
tears only for the public weal. He should be as vigorous 
as a sugar maple, with sap enough to maintain his own ver- 
dure, beside what runs into the troughs, and not like a vine, 



70 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

which being cut in the spring bears no fruit, but bleeds to 
death in the endeavor to heal its wounds. The poet is he 
that hath fat enough, like bears and marmots, to suck his 
claws all winter. He hibernates in this world, and feeds on 
his own marrow. It is pleasant to think in winter, as we 
walk over the snowy pastures, of those happy dreamers that 
lie under the sod, of dormice and all that race of dormant 
creatures, which have such a superfluity of life enveloped 
in thick folds of fur, impervious to cold. Alas, the poet too 
is, in one sense, a sort of dormouse gone into winter quarters 
of deep and serene thoughts, insensible to surrounding cir- 
cumstances; his words are the relation of his oldest and 
finest memory, a wisdom drawn from the remotest experi- 
ence. Other men lead a starved existence, meanwhile, like 
hawks, that would fain keep on the wing, and trust to pick 
up a sparrow now and then. 

There are already essays and poems, the growth of this 
land, which are not in vain, all which, however, we could 
conveniently have stowed in the till of our chest. If the gods 
permitted their own inspiration to be breathed in vain, these 
might be overlooked in the crowd, but the accents of truth 
are as sure to be heard at last on earth as in heaven. They 
already seem ancient, and in some measure have lost the 
traces of their modern birth. Here are they who 

"ask for that which is our whole life's light, 

For the perpetual, true, and clear insight." 

I remember a few sentences which spring like the sward in 
its native pasture, where its roots were never disturbed, and 
not as if spread over a sandy embankment; answering to 
the poet's prayer, 

"Let us set so just 

A rate on knowledge, that the world may trust 

The poet's sentence, and not still aver 

Each art is to itseK a flatterer." 

But, above all, in our native port, did we not frequent the 
peaceful games of the Lyceum, from which a new era will 
be dated to New England, as from the games of Greece? 
For if Herodotus carried his history to Ol5mipia to read, 
after the cestus and the race, have we not heard such his- 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 71 

tories recited there, which since our countrymen have read; 
as made Greece sometimes to be forgotten ? — Philosophy, 
too, has there her grove and portico, not wholly unfrequented 
in these days. 

Lately the victor, whom all Pindars praised, has won 
another palm, contending with 

"Olympian bards who sung 
Divine ideas below. 
Which always find us young, 
And always keep us so. " — 

What earth or sea, mountain or stream, or Muses' spring or 
grove, is safe from his all-searching ardent eye, who drives 
off Phoebus' beaten track, visits unwonted zones, makes the 
gelid Hyperboreans glow, and the old polar serpent writhe, 
and many a Nile flow back and hide his head ! — 

That Phaeton of our day. 
Who'd make another milky way, 
And burn the world up with his ray ; 

By us an undisputed seer, — 
Who'd drive his flaming car so near 
Unto our shuddering mortal sphere. 

Disgracing all our slender worth. 
And scorching up the Hving earth, 
To prove his heavenly birth. 

The silver spokes, the golden tire. 
Are glowing with unwonted fire, 
And ever nigher roll and nigher ; 

The pins and axle melted are. 

The silver radii fly afar. 

Ah, he will spoil his Father's car ! 

Who let him have the steeds he cannot steer? 
Henceforth the sun will not shine for a year. 
And we shall Ethiops all appear. 

From his 

"Ups of cunning fell 

The thrilling Delphic oracle." 



72 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

And yet, sometimes, 

We should not mind if on our ear there fell 
Some less of cunning, more of oracle. 

It is Apollo shining in your face. rare Contemporary, let 
us have far off heats. Give us the subtler, the heaven! ier 
though fleeting beauty, which passes through and through, 
and dwells not in the verse; even pure water, which but 
reflects those tints which wine wears in its grain. Let epic 
trade-winds blow, and cease this waltz of inspirations. Let 
us oftener feel even the gentle south-west wind upon our 
cheeks blowing from the Indians' heaven. What though 
we lose a thousand meteors from the sky, if skyey depths, if 
star-dust and undissolvable nebulae remain? What though 
we lose a thousand wise responses of the oracle, if we may 
have instead some natural acres of Ionian earth? 
Though we know well, 

■ "That 't is not in the power of kings [or presidents] to raise 
A spirit for verse that is not born thereto, 
Nor are they born in every prince's days;" 

yet spite of all they sang in praise of their "Eliza's reign," 
we have evidence that poets may be born and sing in our day, 
in the presidency of James K. Polk, 

"And that the utmost powers of EngUsh rhyme," 
Were not "within her peaceful reign confined." 

The prophecy of Samuel Daniel is already how much more 
than fulfilled! 

"And who in time knows whither we may vent 
The treasure of our tongue? To what strange shores 
This gain of our best glory shall be sent, 
T' enrich unknowing nations with our stores? 
What worlds in th ' yet unformed Occident, 
May come refined with the accents that are ours." 

Enough has been said in these days of the charm of fluent 
writing. We hear it complained of some works of genius, 
that they have fine thoughts, but are irregular and have no 
flow. But even the mountain peaks in the horizon are, to 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 73 

the eye of science, parts of one range. We should consider 
that the flow of thought is more like a tidal wave than a prone 
river, and is the result of a celestial influence, not of any 
declivity in its channel. The river flows because it runs down 
hill, and descends the faster as it flows more rapidly. The 
reader who expects to float down stream for the whole voyage, 
may well complain of nauseating swells and choppings of 
the sea when his frail shore-craft gets amidst the billows of 
the ocean stream, which flows as much to sun and moon as 
lesser streams to it. But if we would appreciate the flow that 
is in these books, we must expect to feel it rise from the page 
like an exhalation, and wash away our critical brains like hurt 
millstones, flowing to higher levels above and behind ourselves. 
There is many a book which ripples on like a freshet, and flows 
as glibly as a mill stream sucking under a causeway; and 
when their authors are in the full tide of their discourse, 
Pythagoras and Plato and Jamblichus halt beside them. 
Their long, .stringy, slimy sentences are of that consistency 
that they naturally flow and run together. They read as 
if written for milita1:y men, for men of business, there is such 
a despatch in them. Compared with these, the grave thinkers 
and philosophers seem not to have got their swaddling clothes 
off; they are slower than a Roman army in its march, the 
rear camping to-night where the van camped last night. The 
wise Jamblichus eddies and gleams like a watery slough. 

"How many thousand, never heard the name 
Of Sidney, or of Spenser, or their books ? 
And yet brave fellows, and presume of fame, 

And seem to bear down all the world with looks." 

The ready writer seizes the pen, and shouts. Forward ! Alamo 
and Fanning ! and after rolls the tide of war. The very walls 
and fences seem to travel. But the most rapid trot is no flow 
after all, — and thither you and I, at least, reader, will not 
follow. 

A perfectly healthy sentence, it is true, is extremely rare. 
For the most part we miss the hue and fragrance of the 
thought ; as if we could be satisfied with the dews of the morn- 
ing or evening without their colors, or the heavens without 
their azure. The most attractive sentences are, perhaps, 
not the wisest, but the surest and roundest. They are spoken 
firmly and conclusively, as if the speaker had a right to know 



74 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

what he says, and if not wise, they have at least been well 
learned. Sir Walter Raleigh might well be studied if only 
for the excellence of his style, for he is remarkable in the 
midst of so many masters. There is a natural emphasis in 
his style, like a man's tread, and a breathing space between 
the sentences, which the best of modern writing does not 
furnish. His chapters are like English parks, or say rather 
like a western forest, where the larger growth keeps down the 
underwood, and one may ride on horse-back through the 
openings. All the distinguished writers of that period, 
possess a greater vigor and naturalness than the more modern, 
— for it is allowed to slander our own time, — and when we 
read a quotation from one of them in the midst of a modern 
author, we seem to have come suddenly upon a greener 
ground, a greater depth and strength of soil. It is as if a 
green bough were laid across the page, and we are refreshed 
as by the sight of fresh grass in mid-winter or early spring. 
You have constantly the warrant of life and experience in 
what you read. The little that is said is eked out by implica- 
tion of the much that was done. The sentences are verduous 
and blooming as evergreen and flowers, because they are 
rooted in fact and experience, but our false and florid sentences 
have only the tints of flowers without their sap or roots. 
All men are really most attracted by the beauty of plain 
speech, and they even write in a florid style in imitation of 
this. They prefer to be misunderstood rather than to come 
short of its exuberance. Hussein Effendi praised the episto- 
lary style of Ibrahim Pasha to the French traveller Botta, 
because of "the difficulty of understanding it; there was," 
he said, "but one person at Jidda who was capable of under- 
standing and explaining the Pasha's correspondence." A 
man's whole fife is taxed for the least thing well done. It is 
its net result. Every sentence is the result of a long proba- 
tion. Where shall we look for standard English, but to the 
words of a standard man? The word which is best said 
came nearest to not being spoken at all, for it is cousin to a 
deed which the speaker could have better done. Nay, almost 
it must have taken the place of a deed by some urgent neces- 
sity, even by some misfortune, so that the truest writer will 
be some captive knight, after all. And perhaps the fates 
had such a design, when, having stored Raleigh so richly 
with the substance of life and experience, they made him a 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 75 

fast prisoner, and compelled him to make his words his deeds, 
and transfer to his expression the emphasis and sincerity of 
his action. 

Men have a respect for scholarship and learning greatly 
out of proportion to the use they commonly serve. We are 
amused to read how Ben Jonson engaged, that the dull masks 
with which the royal family and nobiUty were to be enter- 
tained, should be ''grounded upon antiquity and soUd learn- 
ing." Can there be any greater reproach than an idle learn- 
ing? Learn to spUt wood, at least. The necessity of labor 
and conversation with many men and things, to the scholar 
is rarely well remembered; steady labor with the hands, 
which engrosses the attention also, is unquestionably the 
best method of removing palaver and sentimentality out of 
one's style, both of speaking and writing. If he has worked 
hard from morning till night, though he may have grieved 
that he could not be watching the train of his thoughts dur- 
ing that time, yet the few hasty lines which at evening record 
his day's experience will be more musical and true than his 
freest but idle fancy could have furnished. Surely the writer 
is to address a world of laborers, and such therefore must be 
his own disciphne. He will not idly dance at his work who 
has wood to cut and cord before nightfall in the short days 
of winter ; but every stroke will be husbanded, and ring so- 
berly through the wood ; and so will the strokes of that scholar's 
pen, which at evening record the story of the day, ring soberly, 
yet cheerily, on the ear of the reader, long after the echoes 
of his axe have died away. The scholar may be sure that he 
writes the tougher truth for the calluses on his palms. They 
give firmness to the sentence. Indeed, the mind never makes 
a great and successful effort without a corresponding energy 
of the body. We are often struck by the force and precision 
of style to which hard-working men, unpractised in writing, 
easily attain, when required to make the effort. As if plain- 
ness, and vigor, and sincerity, the ornaments of style, were 
better learned on the farm and in the workshop than in the 
schools. The sentences written by such rude hands are 
nervous and tough, like hardened thongs, the sinews of the 
deer, or the roots of the pine. As for the graces of expression, 
a great thought is never found in a mean dress ; but though 
it proceed from the lips of the Woloffs, the nine Muses and the 
three Graces will have conspired to clothe it in fit phrase. 



76 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

Its education has always been liberal, and its implied wit 
can endow a college. The scholar might frequently emulate 
the propriety and emphasis of the farmer's call to his team, 
and confess that if that were written it would surpass his 
labored sentences. Whose are the truly labored sentences? 
From the weak and flimsy periods of the politician and lit- 
erary man, we are glad to turn even to the description of work, 
the simple record of the month's labor in the farmer's al- 
manac, to restore our tone and spirits. A sentence should 
read as if its author, had he held a plow instead of a pen, could 
have drawn a furrow deep and straight to the end. The 
scholar requires hard and serious labor to give an impetus 
to his thought. He will learn to grasp the pen firmly so, 
and wield it gracefully and effectively, as an axe or a sword. 
When we consider the weak and nerveless periods of some 
literary men, who perchance in feet and inches come up to 
the standard of their race, and are not deficient in girth also, 
we are amazed at the immense sacrifice of thews and sinews. 
What ! these proportions, — these bones, — and this their 
work! Hands which could have felled an ox have hewed 
this fragile matter which would not have tasked a lady's 
fingers ! Can this be a stalwart man's work, who has a mar- 
row in his back and a tendon Achilles in his heel? They 
who set up the blocks of Stonehenge did somewhat, if they 
only laid out their strength for once, and stretched themselves. 
Yet, after all, the truly efficient laborer will not crowd his 
day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a 
wide halo of ease and leisure, and then do but what he loves 
best. He is anxious only about the fruitful kernels of time. 
Though the hen should sit all day, she could lay only one egg, 
and, besides, would not have picked up materials for another. 
Let a man take time enough for the most trivial deed, though 
it be but the paring of his nails. The buds swell impercep- 
tibly, without hurry or confusion, as if the short spring days 
were an eternity. — 

Then spend an age in whetting thy desire, 
Thou need'st not hasten if thou dost stand fast. 

Some hours seem not to be occasion for any deed, but for 
resolves to draw breath in. We do not directly go about 
the execution of the purpose that thrills us, but shut our doors 
behind us, and ramble with prepared mind, as if the half were 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 77 

already done. Our resolution is taking root or hold on the 
earth then, as seeds first send a shoot downward which is fed 
by their own albumen, ere they send one upward to the hght. 

There is a sort of homely truth and naturalness in some 
books which is very rare to find, and yet looks cheap enough. 
There may be nothing lofty in the sentiment, or fine in the 
expression, but it is careless country talk. HomeUness is 
almost as great a merit in a book as in a house, if the reader 
would abide there. It is next to beauty, and a very high 
art. Some have this merit only. The scholar is not apt 
to make his most familiar experience come gracefully to the 
aid of his expression. Very few men can speak of Nature, for 
instance, with any truth. They overstep her modesty, some- 
how or other, and confer no favor. They do not speak a good 
word for her. Most cry better than speak, and you can get 
more nature out of them by pinching than by addressing them. 
The surliness with which the woodchopper speaks of his woods, 
handhng them as indifferently as his axe, is better than the 
mealy-mouthed enthusiasm of the lover of Nature. Better 
that the primrose by the river's brim be a yellow primrose, 
and nothing more, than that it be something less. Aubrey 
relates of Thomas Fuller that his was " a very working head, 
insomuch that, walking and meditating before dinner, he 
would eat up a penny loaf, not knowing that he did it. His 
natural memory was very great, to which he added the art 
of memory. He would repeat to you forwards and backwards 
all the signs from Ludgate to Charing-cross." He says of 
Mr. John Hales, that "He loved Canarie," and was buried 

"under an altar monument of black marble with a too 

long epitaph;" of Edmund Halley, that he, "at sixteen 
could make a dial, and then, he said, he thought himself a 
brave fellow;" of WiUiam Holder, who wrote a book upon 
his curing one Popham who was deaf and dumb, "he was 
beholding to no author; did only consult with Nature." 
For the most part, an author consults only with all who have 
written before him upon a subject, and his book is but the 
advice of so many. But a good book will never have been 
forestalled, but the topic itself will in one sense be new, and 
its author, by consulting with Nature, will consult not only 
with those who have gone before, but with those who may 
come after. There is always room and occasion enough for 



78 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

a true book on any subject ; as there is room for more light 
the brightest day and more rays will not interfere with the 
first. 

We thus worked our way up this river, gradually adjust- 
ing our thoughts to novelties, beholding from its placid bosom 
a new nature and new works of men, and as it were with in- 
creasing confidence, finding Nature still habitable, genial, 
and propitious to us; not following any beaten path, but 
the windings of the river, as ever the nearest way for us. 
Fortunately we had no business in this country. The Con- 
cord had rarely been a river or rivus, but barely fluvius, or 
between fluvius and locus. This Merrimack was neither 
rivv^ nor fluvius nor lax^us, but rather amnis here, a gently 
swelling and stately rolling flood approaching the sea. We 
could even sympathize with its buoyant tide, going to seek its 
fortune in the ocean, and anticipating the time when ''being 
received within the plain of its freer water," it should ''beat 
the shores for banks," — 

" campoque recepta 
Liberioris aquae, pro ripis litora pulsant." 

At length we doubled a low shrubby islet, called Rabbit 
Island, subjected alternately to the sun and to the waves, 
as desolate as if it lay some leagues within the icy sea, and 
found ourselves in a narrower part of the river, near the sheds 
and yards for picking the stone known as the Chelmsford 
granite, which is quarried in Chelmsford and the neighboring 
towns. We passed Wicasuck Island, which contains seventy 
acres or more, on our right between Chelmsford and Tyngs- 
boro'. This was a favorite residence of the Indians. Ac- 
cording to the History of Dunstable, "About 1663, the oldest 
son of Passaconaway [Chief of the Penacooks] was thrown 
into jail for a debt of £45, due to John Tinker, by one of his 
tribe, and which he had promised verbally should be paid. 
To relieve him from his imprisonment, his brother Wan- 
nalancet and others, who owned Wicasuck Island, sold it 
and paid the debt." It was, however, restored to the Indians 
by the General Court in 1665. After the departure of the 
Indians in 1683, it was granted to Jonathan Tyng in payment 
for his services to the colony, in maintaining a garrison at 
his house. Tyng's house stood not far from Wicasuck Falls. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 79 

Gookin, who, in his Epistle Dedicatory to Robert Boyle, 
apologizes for presenting his "matter clothed in a wilderness 
dress," says that on the breaking out of Philip's war in 1675, 
there were taken up by the Christian Indians and the English 
in Marlborough, and sent to Cambridge, seven "Indians 
belonging to Narragansett, Long Island, and Pequod, who 
had all been at work about seven weeks with one Mr. Jonathan 
Tyng, of Dunstable, upon Merrimack River; and hearing 
of the war, they reckoned with their master, and getting their 
wages, conveyed themselves away without his privity, and 
being afraid, marched secretly through the woods, designing 
to go to their own country." However, they were released 
soon after. Such were the hired men in those days. Tyng 
was the first permanent settler of Dunstable, which then 
embraced what is now Tyngsboro' and many other towns. 
In the winter of 1675, in Philip's war, every other settler left 
the town, but "he," says the historian of Dunstable, "forti- 
fied his house; and although 'obliged to send to Boston for 
his food,' sat himself down in the midst of his savage enemies, 
alone, in the wilderness, to defend his home. Deeming his 
position an important one for the defence of the frontiers, 
in Feb. 1676, he petitioned the Colony for aid," humbly show- 
ing, as his petition runs, that as he lived "in the uppermost 
house on Merrimac River, lying open to ye enemy, yet being 
so seated that it is, as it were, a watch-house to the neighbor- 
ing towns," he could render important service to his country 
if only he had some assistance, "there being," he said, "never 
an inhabitant left in the town but myself." Wherefore he 
requests that their "Honors would be pleased to order him 
three or four men to help garrison his said house," which they 
did. But methinks that such a garrison would be weakened 
by the addition of a man. — 

" Make bandog thy scout watch to bark at a thief, 
Make courage for life, to be captain chief ; 
Make trap-door thy bulwark, make bell to begin, 
Make gunstone and arrow shew who is within." 

Thus he earned the title of first permanent settler. In 1694 
a law was passed "that every settler who deserted a town for 
fear of the Indians, should forfeit all his rights therein." But 
now, at any rate, as I have frequently observed, a man may 
desert the fertile frontier territories of truth and justice, 



80 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

which are the State's best lands, for fear of far more insig- 
nificant foes, without forfeiting any of his civil rights therein. 
Nay, townships are granted to deserters, and the General 
Court, as I am sometimes inclined to regard it, is but a desert- 
ers' camp itself. 

As we rowed along near the shore of Wicasuck Island, which 
was then covered with wood, in order to avoid the current, 
two men, who looked as if they had just run out of Lowell, 
where they had been waylaid by the Sabbath, meaning to 
go to Nashua, and who now found themselves in the strange, 
natural, uncultivated and unsettled part of the globe which 
intervenes, full of walls and barriers, a rough and uncivil 
place to them, seeing our boat moving so smoothly up the 
stream, called out from the high bank above our heads to 
know if we would take them as passengers, as if this were the 
street they had missed; that they might sit and chat and 
drive away the time, and so at last find themselves in Nashua. 
This smooth way they much preferred. But our boat was 
crowded with necessary furniture, and sunk low in the water, 
and moreover required to be worked, for even it did not pro- 
gress against the stream without effort; so we were obliged 
to deny them passage. As we glided away with even sweeps, 
while the fates scattered oil in our course, the sun now sinking 
behind the alders on the distant shore, we could still see them 
far off over the water, running along the shore and climbing 
over the rocks and fallen trees like insects, — for they did 
not know any better than we that they were on an island, — 
the unsympathizing river ever flowing in an opposite direc- 
tion ; until, having reached the entrance of the Island Brook, 
which they had probably crossed upon the locks below, they 
found a more effectual barrier to their progress. They seemed 
to be learning much in a little time. They ran about like 
ants on a burning brand, and once more they tried the river 
here, and once more there, to see if water still indeed was 
not to be walked on, as if a new thought inspired them, and 
by some peculiar disposition of the limbs they could accom- 
plish it. At length sober common sense seemed to have 
resumed its sway, and they concluded that what they had 
so long heard must be true, and resolved to ford the shallower 
stream. When nearly a mile distant we could see them 
stripping off their clothes and preparing for this experiment ; 
yet it seemed likely that a new dilemma would arise, they were 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 81 

so thoughtlessly throwing away their clothes on the wrong 
side of the stream, as in the case of the countryman with 
his corn, his fox, and his goose, which had to be transported 
one at a time. Whether they got safely through, or went 
round by the locks we never learned. We could not help 
being struck by the seeming, though innocent indifference 
of Nature to these men's necessities, while elsewhere she was 
equally serving others. Like a true benefactress, the secret 
of her service is unchangeableness. Thus is the busiest 
merchant, though within sight of his Lowell, put to pilgrim's 
shifts, and soon comes to staff and scrip and scallop shell. 

We, too, who held the middle of the stream, came near 
experiencing a pilgrim's fate, being tempted to pursue what 
seemed a sturgeon or larger fish, for we remembered that 
this was the Sturgeon river, its dark and monstrous back 
alternately rising and sinking in mid-stream. We kept 
falHng behind, but the fish kept his back well out, and did 
not dive, and seemed to prefer to swim against the stream, 
so, at any rate, he would not escape us by going out to sea. 
At length, having got as near as was convenient, and looking 
out not to get a blow from his tail, now the bow-gunner de- 
livered his charge, while the stern-man held his ground. 
But the halibut-skinned monster, in one of these swift-gliding 
pregnant moments, without ever ceasing his bobbing up and 
down, saw fit, without a chuckle or other prelude, to proclaim 
himself a huge imprisoned spar, placed there as a buoy, to 
warn sailors of sunken rocks. So, each casting some blame 
upon the other, we withdrew quickly to safer waters. 

The Scene-shifter saw fit here to close the drama of this 
day, without regard to any unities which we mortals prize. 
Whether it might have proved tragedy, or comedy, or tragi- 
comedy or pastoral, we cannot tell. This Sunday ended by 
the going down of the sun, leaving us still on the waves. But 
they who are on the water enjoy a longer and brighter twilight 
than they who are on the land, for here the water, as well as 
the atmosphere, absorbs and reflects the light, and some of 
the day seems to have sunk down into the waves. The light 
gradually forsook the deep water, as well as the deeper air, 
and the gloaming came to the fishes as well as to us, and more 
dim and gloomy to them, whose day is a perpetual twilight, 
though sufficiently bright for their weak and watery eyes. 
Vespers had already rung in many a dim and watery chapel 



82 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

down below, where the shadows of the weeds were extended 
in length over the sandy floor. The vespertinal pout had 
already begun to flit on leathern fin, and the finny gossips 
withdrew from the fluvial street to creeks and coves, and other 
private haunts, excepting a few of stronger fin, which anchored 
in the stream, stemming the tide even in their dreams. Mean- 
while, like a dark evening cloud, we were wafted over the 
cope of their sky, deepening the shadows on their deluged 
fields. 

Having reached a retired part of the river where it spread 
out to sixty rods in width, we pitched our tent on the east 
side, in Tyngsboro', just above some patches of the beach 
plum, which was now nearly ripe, where the sloping bank 
was a sufficient pillow, and with the bustle of sailors making 
the land, we transferred such stores as were required from boat 
to tent, and hung a lantern to the tent-pole, and so our house 
was ready. With a buffalo spread on the grass, and a blanket 
for our covering, our bed was soon made. A fire crackled 
merrily before the entrance, so near that we could tend it 
without stepping abroad, and when we had supped, we put 
out the blaze, and closed the door, and with the semblance 
of domestic comfort, sat up to read the gazetteer, to learn our 
latitude and longitude, and write the journal of the voyage, 
or listened to the wind and the rippling of the river till sleep 
overtook us. There we lay under an oak on the bank of the 
stream, near to some farmer's corn-field, getting sleep, and 
forgetting where we were; a great blessing, that we are 
obliged to forget our enterprises every twelve hours. Minks, 
muskrats, meadow-mice, woodchucks, squirrels, skunks, 
rabbits, foxes and weasels, all inhabit near, but keep very 
close while you are there. The river sucking and eddying 
away all night down toward the marts and the seaboard, 
a great work and freshet, and no small enterprise to reflect 
on. Instead of the Scythian vastness of the Billerica night, 
and its wild musical sounds, we were kept awake by the bois- 
terous sport of some Irish laborers on the railroad, wafted to 
us over the water, still unwearied and unresting on this seventh 
day, who would not have done with whirling up and down 
the track with ever increasing velocity and still reviving 
shouts, till late in the night. 

One sailor was visited in his dreams this night by the Evil 
Destinies, and all those powers that are hostile to human 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 83 

life, which constrain and oppress the minds of men, and make 
their path seem difficult and narrow, and beset with dangers, 
so that the most innocent and worthy enterprises appear 
insolent and a tempting of fate, and the gods go not with us. 
But the other happily passed serene and even ambrosial 
or immortal night, and his sleep was dreamless, or only the 
atmosphere of pleasant dreams remained, a happy natural 
sleep until the morning, and his cheerful spirit soothed and 
reassured his brother, for whenever they meet, the Good 
Genius is sure to prevail. 



MONDAY 

*'I thynke for to touche also 
The worlde whiche neweth everie daie, 
So as I can, so as I male." 

— GOWER. 

"Gazed on the Heavens for what he missed on Earth." 

Britannia's Pastorals. 

When the first light dawned on the earth, and the birds 
awoke, and the brave river was heard rippling confidently 
seaward, and the nimble early rising wind rustled the oak 
leaves about our tent, all men, having reinforced their bodies 
and their souls with sleep, and cast aside doubt and fear, 
were invited to unattempted adventures. 

One of us took the boat over to the opposite shore, which 
was flat and accessible, a quarter of a mile distant, to empty 
it of water and wash out the clay, while the other kindled a 
fire and got breakfast ready. At an early hour we were 
again on our way, rowing through the fog as before, the river 
already awake, and a million crisped waves come forth to 
meet the sun when he should show himseK. The country- 
men, recruited by their day of rest, were already stirring, 
and had begun to cross the ferry on the business of the week. 
This ferry was as busy as a beaver dam, and all the world 
seemed anxious to get across the Merrimack River at this 
particular point, waiting to get set over, — children with 
their two cents done up in paper, jail-birds broke loose and 
constable with warrant, travellers from distant lands to 
distant lands, men and women to whom the Merrimack 



84 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

River was a bar. There stands a gig in the gray morning, 
in the mist, the impatient traveller pacing the wet shore 
with whip in hand, and shouting through the fog after the 
regardless Charon and his retreating ark, as if he might 
throw that passenger overboard and return forthwith for 
himself; he will compensate him. He is to break his fast 
at some unseen place on the opposite side. It may be Led- 
yard or the Wandering Jew. Whence pray did he come out 
of the foggy night? and whither through the sunny day will 
he go ? We observe only his transit ; important to us, for- 
gotten by him, transiting all day. There are two of them. 
May be, they are Virgil and Dante. But when they crossed 
the Styx, none were seen bound up or down the stream, that 
I remember. It is only a transjedus, a transitory voyage, 
like life itself, none but the long-lived gods bound up or down 
the stream. Many of these Monday men are ministers, no 
doubt, reseeking their parishes with hired horses, with ser- 
mons in their vaUses all read and gutted, the day after never 
with them. They cross each other's routes all the country 
over Hke woof and warp, making a garment of loose texture ; 
vacation now for six days. They stop to pick nuts and 
berries, and gather apples by the wayside at their leisure. 
Good rehgious men, with the love of men in their hearts, 
and the means to pay their toll in their pockets. We got 
over this ferry chain without scraping, rowing athwart the 
tide of travel, — no toll from us that day. 

The fog dispersed and we rowed leisurely along through 
Tyngsboro', with a clear sky and a mild atmosphere, leaving 
the habitations of men behind and penetrating yet further 
into the territory of ancient Dunstable. It was from Dun- 
stable, then a frontier town, that the famous Capt. Lovewell, 
with his company, marched in quest of the Indians on the 
18th of April, 1725. He was the son of "an ensign in the 
army of OUver Cromwell, who came to this country, and 
settled at Dunstable, where he died at the great age of one 
hundred and twenty years." In the words of the old nursery 
tale, sung about a hundred years ago, — 

"He and his vahant soldiers did range the woods full wide, 
And hardships they endured to quell the Indian's pride." 

In the shaggy pine forest of Pequawket they met the "rebel 
Indians," and prevailed, after a bloody fight, and a remnant 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 85 

returned home to enjoy the fame of their victory. A town- 
ship called Lovewell's Town, but now, for some reason, or 
perhaps without reason, Pembroke, was granted them by 
the State. 

"Of all our valiant English, there were but thirty-four, 
And of the rebel Indians, there were about four score ; 
And sixteen of our English safely home return, 
The rest were killed and wounded, for which we all must mourn. 

"Our worthy Capt. Lovewell among them there did die, 
They killed Lieut. Robbins, and wounded good young Frye, 
Who was our English Chaplin ; he many Indians slew, 
And some of them he scalped while bullets round him flew." 

Our brave forefathers have exterminated all the Indians, 
and their degenerate children no longer dwell in garrisoned 
houses, nor hear any war-whoop in their path. It would be 
well, perchance, if many an "English Chaplin" in these days 
could exhibit as unquestionable trophies of this valor as did 
"good young Frye." We have need to be as sturdy pioneers 
still as Miles Standish, or Church, or Lovewell. We are to 
follow on another trail, it is true, but one as convenient for 
ambushes. What if the Indians are exterminated, are not 
savages as grim prowUng about the clearings to-day? — 

"And braving many dangers and hardships in the way, 
They safe arrived at Dunstable the thirteenth (?) day of May." 

But they did not all "safe arrive in Dunstable the thir- 
teenth," or the fifteenth, or the thirtieth "day of May." 
Eleazer Davis and Josiah Jones, both of Concord, for our 
native town^^had seven men in this fight. Lieutenant Farwell, 
of Dunstable, and Jonathan Frye, of Andover, who were 
all wounded, were left behind, creeping toward the settle- 
ments. "After travelUng several miles, Frye was left and 
lost," though a more recent poet has assigned him company 
in his last hours. — 

^"A man he was of comely form, 

Polished and brave, well learned and kind ; 
Old Harvard's learned halls he left 
Far in the wilds a grave to find. 



86 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

" Ah ! now his blood-red arm he lifts ; 
His closing Uds he tries to raise ; 
And speak once more before he dies, 
In supplication and in praise. 

"He prays kind Heaven to grant success, 
Brave Lovewell's men to guide and bless. 
And when they've shed their heart-blood true, 
To raise them all to happiness." ... 

"Lieutenant Farwell took his hand, 
His arm around his neck he threw. 
And said, ' brave Chaplain I could wish, 
That Heaven had made me die for you.*" 

Farwell held out eleven days. "A tradition says," as 
we learn from the history of Concord, "that arriving at a 
pond with Lieut. Farwell, Davis pulled off one of his moc- 
casins, cut it in strings, on which he fastened a hook, caught 
some fish, fried and ate them. They refreshed hini, but 
were injurious to Farwell, who died soon after." Davis had 
a ball lodged in his body, and his right hand shot off ; but on 
the whole, he seems to have been less damaged than his com- 
panion. He came into Berwick after being out fourteen 
days. Jones also had a ball lodged in his body, but he like- 
wise got into Saco after fourteen days, though not in the best 
condition imaginable. "He had subsisted," says an old 
journal, "on the spontaneous vegetables of the forest; and 
cranberries, which he had eaten, came out of wounds he had 
received in his body." This was also the case with Davis. 
The last two reached home at length, safe if not sound, and 
lived many years in a crippled state to enjoy their pension. 

But alas! of the crippled Indians, and their adventures 
in the woods, — 

" For as we are informed, so thick and fast they fell, 
Scarce twenty of their number at night did get home well," — 

how many balls lodged with them, how it fared with their 
cranberries, what Berwick or Saco they got into, and finally 
what pension or township was granted them, there is no 
journal to tell. 

It is stated in the History of Dunstable, that just before 
his last march, Lovewell was warned to beware of the am- 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 87 

buscades of the enemy, but "he replied, 'that he did not care 
for them,' and bending down a small elm beside which he 
was standing into a bow, declared 'that he would treat the 
Indians in the same way.' This ehn is still standing [in 
Nashua], a venerable and magnificent tree." 

Meanwhile, having passed the Horseshoe Interval in 
Tjnigsboro', where the river makes a sudden bend to the 
northwest, — for our reflections have anticipated our progress 
somewhat, — we were advancing further into the country 
and into the day, which last proved almost as golden as the 
preceding, though the sHght bustle and activity of the 
Monday seemed to penetrate even to this scenery. Now and 
then we had to muster all our energy to get round a point, 
where the river broke rippling over rocks, and the maples 
trailed their branches in the stream, but there was generally 
a back water or eddy on the side, of which we took advantage. 
The river was here about forty rods wide and fifteen feet 
deep. Occasionally one ran along the shore, examining the 
country, and visiting the nearest farm-houses, while the 
other followed the windings of the stream alone, to meet 
his companion at some distant point, and hear the report 
of his adventures; how the farmer praised the coolness of 
his well, and his wife offered the stranger a draught of milk, 
or the children quarrelled for the only transparency in the 
window that they might get sight of the man at Ihe well. 
For though the country seemed so new, and no house was 
observed by us, shut in between the high banks that sunny 
day, we did not have to travel far to find where men in- 
habited, like wild bees, and had sunk wells in the loose sand 
and loam of the Merrimack. There dwelt the subject of 
the Hebrew scriptures, and the Esprit des Lois, where a thin 
vaporous smoke curled up through the noon. All that is 
told of mankind, of the inhabitants of the Upper Nile, and 
the Sunderbunds, and Timbuctoo, and the Orinoko, was 
experience here. Every race and class of men was repre- 
sented. According to Belknap, the historian of New Hamp- 
shire, who wrote sixty years ago, here too, perchance, dwelt 
''new lights," and free thinking men even then. "The 
people in general throughout the State," it is written, "are 
professors of the Christian rehgion in some form or other. 
There is, however, a sort of wise men, who pretend to reject 



88 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

it ; but they have not yet been able to substitute a better 
in its place." 

The other voyageur, perhaps, would in the meanwhile 
have seen a brown hawk, or a woodchuck, or a musquash 
creeping under the alders. 

We occasionally rested in the shade of a maple or a willow, 
and drew forth a melon for our refreshment, while we con- 
templated at our leisure the lapse of the river and of human 
life ; and as that current, with its floating twigs and leaves, 
so did all things pass in review before us, while far away in 
cities and marts on this very stream, the old routine was 
proceeding still. There is, indeed, a tide in the affairs of 
men, as the poet says, and yet as things flow they circulate, 
and the ebb always balances the flow. All streams are but 
tributary to the ocean, which itself does not stream, and the 
shores are unchanged but in longer periods than man can 
measure. Go where we will, we discover infinite change in 
particulars only, not in generals. When I go into a museum, 
and see the mummies wrapped in their linen bandages, I see 
that the times began to need reform as long ago as when 
they walked the earth. I come out into the streets, and 
meet men who declare that the time is near at hand for the 
redemption of the race. But as men lived in Thebes, so do 
they live in Dunstable to-day. "Time drinketh up the 
essence of every great and noble action, which ought to be 
performed, and is delayed in the execution," so says Veeshnoo 
Sarma ; and we perceive that the schemers return again and 
again to common sense and labor. Such is the evidence of 
history. — 

"Yet I doubt not thro' the ages one increasing purpose runs, 
And the thoughts of men are widen'd with the process of the 
Suns." 

There are secret articles in our treaties with the gods, of 
more importance than all the rest, which the historian can 
never know. 

There are many skilful apprentices, but few master work- 
men. On every hand we observe a truly wise practice, in 
education, in morals, and in the arts of life, the embodied 
wisdom of many an ancient philosopher. Who does not 
see that heresies have some time prevailed, that reforms have 
already taken place? All this worldly wisdom might be 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 89 

regarded as the once unamiable heresy of some wise man. 
Some interests have got a footing on the earth which we 
have not made sufficient allowance for. Even they who 
first built these barns, and cleared the land thus, had some 
valor. The abrupt epochs and chasms are smoothed down 
in history as the inequalities of the plain are concealed by 
distance. But unless we do more than simply learn the 
trade of our time, we are but apprentices, and not yet masters 
of the art of life. 

Now that we are casting away these melon seeds, how can 
we help feeUng reproach? He who eats the fruit, should at 
least plant the seed ; aye, if possible, a better seed than that 
whose fruit he has enjoyed. Seeds ! there are seeds enough 
which need only to be stirred in with the soil where they he, 
by an inspired voice or pen, to bear fruit of a divine flavor. 
O thou spendthrift ! Defray thy debt to the world ; eat not 
the seed of institutions, as the luxurious do, but plant it 
rather, while thou devourest the pulp and tuber for thy 
subsistence; that so, perchance, one variety may at last 
be found worthy of preservation. 

There are moments when all anxiety and stated toil are 
becalmed in the infinite leisure and repose of nature. All 
laborers must have their nooning, and at this season of the 
day, we are all, more or less, Asiatics, and give over all work 
and reform. While lying thus on our oars by the side of 
the stream, in the heat of the day, our boat held by an osier 
put through the staple in its prow, and slicing the melons, 
which are a fruit of the east, our thoughts reverted to Arabia, 
Persia, and Hindostan, the lands of contemplation and 
dwelUng places of the ruminant nations. In the experience 
of this noontide we could find some apology even for the 
instinct of the opium, betel, and tobacco chewers, Mount 
Sab^r, according to the French traveller and naturahst, 
Botta, is celebrated for producing the Kdt tree, of which 
"the soft tops of the twigs and tender leaves are eaten," says 
his reviewer, "and produce an agreeable soothing excitement, 
restoring from fatigue, banishing sleep, and disposing to 
the enjoyment of conversation." We thought that we might 
lead a dignified oriental life along this stream as well, and 
the maple and alders would be our Kdt trees. 

It is a great pleasure to escape sometimes from the rest- 
less class of Reformers. What if these grievances exist? 



flto A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

So do you and I. Think you that sittmg hens are troubled 
with ennui these long summer days, sitting on and on in the 
crevice of a hay-loft, without active employment? By the 
faint cackling in distant barns, I judge that dame Nature 
is interested to know how many eggs her hens lay. The 
Universal Soul, as it is called, has an interest in the stacking 
of hay, the foddering of cattle, and the draining of peat 
meadows. Away in Scythia, away in India, it makes butter 
and cheese. Suppose that all farms are rxm out, and we 
youths must buy old land and bring it to, still ever3rwhere 
the relentless opponents of reform bear a strange resemblance 
to ourselves; or perchance, they are a few old maids and 
bachelors, who sit round the kitchen hearth, and Usten to 
the singing of the kettle. ''The oracles often give victory 
to our choice, and not to the order alone of the mundane 
periods. As, for instance, when they say, that our voluntary 
sorrows germinate in us as the growth of the particular life 
we lead." The reform which you talk about can be under- 
taken any morning before unbarring our doors. We need 
not call any convention. When two neighbors begin to eat 
corn bread, who before ate wheat, then the gods smile from 
ear to ear, for it is very pleasant to them. Why do you not 
try it ? Don't let me hinder you. 

There are theoretical reformers at all times, and all the 
world over, Hving on anticipation. Wolff, travehng in the 
deserts of Bokhara, says : "Another party of derveeshes came 
to me and observed, 'The time will come when there shall 
be no difference between rich and poor, between high and 
low, when property will be in common, even wives and chil- 
dren.'" But forever I ask of such, what then? The der- 
veeshes in the deserts of Bokhara and the reformers in Marl- 
boro' Chapel sing the same song. "There's a good time 
coming, boys," but, asked one of the audience in good 
faith, "Can you fix the date?" Said I, "Will you help it 
along?" 

The nonchalance and dolce-far-niente air of nature and 
society hint at infinite periods in the progress of mankind. 
The States have leisure to laugh from Maine to Texas at 
some newspaper joke, and New England shakes at the double- 
entendres of Australian circles, while the poor reformer cannot 
get a hearing. 

Men do not fail commonly for want of knowledge, but for 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 91 

want of prudence to give wisdom the preference. What we 
need to know in any case is very simple. It is but too easy 
to establish another durable and harmonious routine. Im- 
mediately all parts of nature consent to it. Only make 
something to take the place of something, and men will 
behave as if it were the very thing they wanted. They must 
behave, at any rate, and will work up any material. There 
is always a present and extant life, be it better or worse, 
which all combine to uphold. We should be slow to mend, 
my friends, as slow to require mending, ''Not hurling, ac- 
cording to the oracle, a transcendent foot towards piety." 
The language of excitement is at best picturesque merely. 
You must be calm before you can utter oracles. What was 
the excitement of the Delphic priestess compared with the 
calm wisdom of Socrates ? — or whoever it was that was 
wise. — Enthusiasm is a supernatural serenity. 

" Men find that action is another thing 

Than what they in discoursing papers read ; 
The world's affairs require in managing 

More arts than those wherein you clerks proceed." 

As in geology, so in social institutions, we may discover the 
causes of all past change in the present invariable order of 
society. The greatest appreciable physical revolutions are 
the work of the light-footed air, the stealthy-paced water, 
and the subterranean fire. Aristotle said, ''As time never 
fails, and the universe is eternal, neither the Tanais nor the 
Nile, can have flowed forever." We are independent of 
the change we detect. The longer the lever the less per- 
ceptible its motion. It is the slowest pulsation which is 
the most vital. The hero then will know how to wait, as 
well as to make haste. AU good abides with him who waiteth 
wisely; we shall sooner overtake the dawn by remaining 
here than by hurrying over the hills of the west. Be assured 
that every man's success is in proportion to his average ability. 
The meadow flowers spring and bloom where the waters 
annually deposit their slime, not where they reach in some 
freshet only. A man is not his hope, nor his despair, nor yet 
his past deed. We know not yet what we have done, still 
less what we are doing. Wait till evening, and other parts 
of our day's work will shine than we had thought at noon^ 
and we shall discover the real purport of our toil. As when 



92 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

the fanner has reached the end of the furrow and looks back, 
he can best tell where the pressed earth shines most. 

To one who habitually endeavors to contemplate the true 
state of things, the political state can hardly be said to have 
any existence whatever. It is unreal, incredible and in- 
significant to him, and for him to endeavor to extract the 
truth from such lean material is Uke making sugar from 
linen rags, when sugar cane may be had. Generally speak- 
ing, the political news, whether domestic or foreign, might 
be written to-day for the next ten years, with sufficient 
accuracy. Most revolutions in society have not power to 
interest, still less alarm us ; but tell me that our rivers are 
drying up, or the genus pine dying out in the country, and I 
might attend. Most events recorded in history are more 
remarkable than important, like eclipses of the sun and 
moon, by which all are attracted, but whose effects no one 
takes the trouble to calculate. But will the government 
never be so well administered, inquired one, that we private 
men shall hear nothing about it? ''The king answered: 
At all events, I require a prudent and able man, who is 
capable of managing the state affairs of my kingdom. The 
ex-minister said. The criterion, Sire ! of a wise and com- 
petent man, is, that he will not meddle with such like matters." 
Alas, that the ex-minister should have been so nearly right. 

In my short experience of human life, the outward ob- 
stacles, if there were any such, have not been living men, 
but the institutions of the dead. It is grateful to make one's 
way through this latest generation as through dewy grass. 
Men are as innocent as the morning to the unsuspicious. — 

''And round about good-morrows fly, 
As if day taught humanity." 

Not being Reve of this Shire, 

"The early pilgrim blithe he hailed, 

That o'er the hills did stray. 

And many an early husbandman. 

That he met on his way ;" — 

thieves and robbers all nevertheless. I have not so surely 
foreseen that any Cossack or Chippeway would come to 
disturb the honest and simple commonwealth, as that some 
monster institution would at length embrace and crush its 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 93 

free members in its scaly folds ; for it is not to be forgotten, 
that while the law holds fast the thief and murderer, it lets 
itself go loose. When I have not paid the tax which the 
State demanded for that protection which I did not want, 
itself has robbed me; when I have asserted the liberty it 
presumed to declare, itself has imprisoned me. Poor crea- 
ture ! if it knows no better I will not blame it. If it cannot 
live but by these means, I can. I do not wish, it happens, 
to be associated with Massachusetts, either in holding slaves 
or in conquering Mexico. I am a little better than herself 
in these respects. — As for Massachusetts, that huge she 
Briareus, Argus, and Colchian Dragon conjoined, set to 
watch the Heifer of the Constitution and the Golden Fleece, 
we would not warrant our respect for her, like some com- 
positions, to preserve its qualities through all weathers. — 
Thus it has happened, that not the Arch Fiend himself has 
been in my way, but these toils which tradition says were 
originally spun to obstruct him. They are cobwebs and 
trifling obstacles in an earnest man's path, it is true, and at 
length one even becomes attached to his unswept and un- 
dusted garret. I love man — kind, but I hate the institutions 
of the dead unkind. Men execute nothing so faithfully as 
the wills of the dead, to the last codicil and letter. They rule 
this world, and the living are but their executors. Such 
foundations too have our lectures and our sermons com- 
monly. They are all Dudleian; and piety derives its origin 
still from that exploit of pius ^Eneas, who bore his father, 
Anchises, on his shoulders from the ruins of Troy. Or rather, 
like some Indian tribes, we bear about with us the mouldering 
relics of our ancestors on our shoulders. If, for instance, a 
man asserts the value of individual liberty over the merely 
political commonweal, his neighbor still tolerates him, that 
is he who is living near him, sometimes even sustains him, 
but never the State. Its officer, as a living man, may have 
human virtues and a thought in his brain, but as the tool of 
an institution, a jailer or constable it may be, he is not a whit 
superior to his prison key or his staff. Herein is the tragedy ; 
that men doing outrage to their p'roper natures, even those 
called wise and good, lend themselves to perform the office 
of inferior and brutal ones. Hence come war and slavery 
in; and what else maiy not come in by this opening? But 
certainly there are modes by which a man may put bread 



94 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

into his mouth which will not prejudice him as a companion 
and neighbor. 

"Now turn again, turn again, said the pinder, 
For a wrong way you have gone, 
For you have forsaken the king's highway, 
And made a path over the corn." 

Undoubtedly, countless reforms are called for, because 
society is not animated, or instinct enough with life, but in 
the condition of some snakes which I have seen in early 
spring, with alternate portions of their bodies torpid and 
flexible, so that they could wriggle neither way. All men 
are partially buried in the grave of custom, and of some we 
see only the crown of the head above ground. Better are 
the physically dead, for they more lively rot. Even virtue 
is no longer such if it be stagnant. A man's life should be 
constantly as fresh as this river. It should be the same 
channel, but a new water every instant. — 

"Virtues as rivers pass. 

But still remains that virtuous man there was." 

Most men have no inclination, no rapids, no cascades, but 
marshes, and alligators, and miasma instead. We read that 
when in the expedition of Alexander, Onesicritus was sent 
forward to meet certain of the Indian sect of G3rmnosophists, 
and he had told them of those new philosophers of the west, 
Pythagoras, Socrates, and Diogenes, and their doctrines, one 
of them named Dandamis answered, that "They appeared to 
him to have been men of genius, but to have lived with too 
passive a regard for the laws." The philosophers of the west 
are liable to this rebuke still. "They say that Lieou-hia- 
hoei, and Chao-lien did not sustain to the end their resolu- 
tions, and that they dishonored their character. Their 
language was in harmony with reason and justice ; while 
their acts were in harmony with the sentiments of men." 

Chateaubriand said, "There are two things which grow 
stronger in the breast of man, in proportion as he advances 
in years; the love of country and religion. Let them be 
never so much forgotten in youth, they sooner or later 
present themselves to us arrayed in all their charms, and 
excite in the recesses of our hearts, an attachment justly due 
to their beauty." It may be so. But even this infirmity of 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 95 

noble minds marks the gradual decay of youthful hope and 
faith. It is the allowed infidelity of age. There is a saying 
of the Woloffs, "He who was born first has the greatest num- 
ber of old clothes," consequently M. Chateaubriand has 
more old clothes than I have. It is comparatively a faint 
and reflected beauty that is admired, not an essential and 
intrinsic one. It is because the old are weak, feel their 
mortality, and think that they have measured the strength 
of man. They will not boast ; they will be frank and humble. 
Well, let them have the few poor comforts they can keep. 
Humility is still a very human virtue. They look back on 
life, and so see not into the future. The prospect of the 
young is forward and unbounded, mingling the future with 
the present. In the declining day the thoughts make haste 
to rest in darkness, and hardly look forward to the ensuing 
morning. The thoughts of the old prepare for night and 
slumber. The same hopes and prospects are not for him 
who stands upon the rosy mountain-tops of life, and him who 
expects the setting of his earthly day. 

I must conclude that Conscience, if that be the name of it, 
was not given us for no purpose, or for a hindrance. However 
flattering order and experience may look, it is but the repose 
of a lethargy, and we will choose rather to be awake, though 
it be stormy, and maintain ourselves on this earth and in 
this life, as we may, without signing our death-warrant. 
Let us see if we cannot stay here where He has put us, on his 
own conditions. Does not his law reach as far as his light? 
The expedients of the nations clash with one another, only 
the absolutely right is expedient for all. 

There are some passages in the Antigone of Sophocles, well 
known to scholars, of which I am reminded in this connection. 
Antigone has resolved to sprinkle sand on the dead body of 
her brother, Polynices, notwithstanding the edict of King 
Creon condemning to death that one who should perform this 
service, which the Greeks deemed so important, for the 
enemy of his country; but Ismene, who is of a less resolute 
and noble spirit, declines taking part with her sister in this 
work, and says, — 

"I, therefore, asking those under the earth to consider me, 
that I am compelled to do thus, will obey those who are 
placed in office ; for to do extreme things is not wise." 



96 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

Antigone. "I would not ask you, nor would you, if you 
still wished, do it joyfully with me. Be such as seems good 
to you. But I will bury him. It is glorious for me doing this 
to die. I beloved will lie with him beloved, having, like a 
criminal, done what is holy ; since the time is longer in which it 
is necessary for me to please those below, than those here, for 
there I shall always lie. But if it seems good to you, hold in 
dishonor things which are honored by the gods." 

Ismene. '*I indeed do not hold them in dishonor ; but to 
act in opposition to the citizens I am by nature unable." 

Antigone being at length brought before King Creon, he asks, 
"Did you then dare to transgress these laws?" 
Antigone. "For it was not Zeus who proclaimed these to 
me, nor Justice who dwells with the gods l^elow ; it was not 
they who established these laws among men. Nor did I think 
that your proclamations were so strong, as, being a mortal, to 
be able to transcend the unwritten and immovable laws of the 
gods. For not something now and yesterday, but forever 
these live, and no one knows from what time they appeared. 
I was not about to pay the penalty of violating these to the 
gods, fearing the presumption of any man. For I well know 
that I should die, and why not? even if you had not pro- 
claimed it." 

This was concerning the burial of a dead body. 

The wisest conservatism is that of the Hindoos. "Im- 
memorial custom is transcendent law," says Menu. That 
is, it was the custom of the gods before men used it. The 
fault of our New England custom is that it is memorial. 
What is morality but immemorial custom? Conscience is 
the chief of conservatives. "Perform the settled functions," 
says Kreeshna in the Bhagvat-Geeta ; "action is preferable 
to inaction. The journey of thy mortal frame may not 
succeed from inaction." — "A man's own calling, with all 
its faults, ought not to be forsaken. Every undertaking is 
involved in its faults as the fire in its smoke." — "The man 
who is acquainted with the whole, should not drive those 
from their works who are slow of comprehension, and less 
experienced than himself." — "Wherefore, O Arjoon, resolve 
to fight," — is the advice of the God to the irresolute soldier 
who fears to slay his best friends. It is a sublime conserva- 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 97 

tism ; as wide as the world, and as unwearied as time ; pre- 
serving the universe with Asiatic anxiety, in that state in 
which it appeared to their minds. These philosophers dwell 
on the inevitability and unchangeableness of laws, on the 
power of temperament and constitution, the three goon or 
qualities, and the circumstances of birth and affinity. The 
end is an immense consolation ; eternal absorption in Brahma. 
Their speculations never venture beyond their own table 
lands, though they are high and vast as they. Buoyancy, 
freedom, flexibility, variety, possibility, which also are 
qualities of the Unnamed, they deal not with. The un- 
deserved reward is to be earned by an everlasting moral 
drudgery; the incalculable promise of the morrow is, as it 
were, weighed. And who will say that their conservatism 
has not been effectual. "Assuredly," says a French trans- 
lator, speaking of the antiquity and durability of the Chinese 
and Indian nations, and of the wisdom of their legislators, 
"there are there some vestiges of the eternal laws which govern 
the world." 

Christianity, on the other hand, is humane, practical, 
and, in a large sense, radical. So many years and ages of 
the gods those eastern sages sat contemplating Brahm, 
uttering in silence the mystic "Om," being absorbed into 
the essence of the Supreme Being, never going out of them- 
selves, but subsiding further and deeper within ; so infinitely 
wise, yet infinitely stagnant; until, at last, in that same 
Asia, but in the western part of it, appeared a youth, wholly 
unforetold by them, — not being absorbed into Brahm, but 
bringing Brahm down to earth and to mankind; in whom 
Brahm had awaked from his long sleep, and exerted himself, 
and the day began, — a new avatar. The Brahman had 
never thought to be a brother of mankind as well as a child 
of God. Christ is the prince of Reformers and Radicals. 
Many expressions in the New Testament come naturally to 
the lips of all protestants, and it furnishes the most pregnant 
and practical text. There is no harmless dreaming, no 
wise speculation in it, but everywhere a substratum of good 
sense. It never reflects, but it repents. There is no poetry 
in it, we may say, nothing regarded in the light of pure beauty, 
but moral truth is its object. All mortals are convicted by 
its conscience. 

The New Testament is remarkable for its pure morality; 



98 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

the best of the Hindoo Scripture, fot its pure intellectuality. 
The reader is nowhere raised into and sustained in a higher, 
purer, or rarer region of thought than in the Bhagvat-Geeta. 
Warren Hastings, in his sensible letter recommending the 
translation of this book to the Chairman of the East India 
Company, declares the original to be "of a sublimity of con- 
ception, reasoning, and diction, almost unequalled," and 
that the writings of the Indian philosophers "will survive 
when the British dominion in India shall have long ceased 
to exist, and when the sources which it once yielded to wealth 
and power are lost to remembrance." It is unquestionably 
one of the noblest and most sacred scriptures that have come 
down to us. Books are to be distinguished by the grandeur 
of their topics, even more than by the manner in which they 
are treated. The oriental philosophy approaches, easily, 
loftier themes than the modern aspires to ; and no wonder if 
it sometimes prattle about them. It only assigns their due 
rank respectively to Action and Contemplation, or rather 
does full justice to the latter. Western philosophers have 
not conceived of the significance of Contemplation in their 
sense. Speaking of the spiritual discipline to which the 
Brahmans subjected themselves, and the wonderful power 
of abstraction to which they attained, instances of which 
had come under his notice, Hastings says : — 

"To those who have never been accustomed to the separa- 
tion of the mind from the notices of the senses, it may not 
be easy to conceive by what means such a power is to be 
attained; since even the most studious men of our hemi- 
sphere will find it difficult so to restrain their attention, but 
that it will wander to some object of present sense or recollec- 
tion ; and even the buzzing of a fly will sometimes have the 
power to disturb it. But if we are told that there have been 
men who were successively, for ages past, in the daily habit 
of abstracted contemplation, begun in the earliest period of 
youth, and continued in many to the maturity of age, each 
adding some portion of knowledge to the store accumulated 
by his predecessors ; it is not assuming too much to conclude, 
that as the mind ever gathers strength, like the body, by 
exercise, so in such an exercise it may in each have acquired 
the faculty to which they aspired, and that their collective 
studies may have led them to the discovery of new tracks and 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 99 

combinations of sentiment, totally different from the doc- 
trines with which the learned of other nations are acquainted ; 
doctrines which, however speculative and subtle, still, as 
they possess the advantage of being derived from a source so 
free from every adventitious mixture, may be equally founded 
in truth with the most simple of our own." 

"The forsaking of works" was taught by Kreeshna to 
the most ancient of men, and handed down from one to 
another, ''until at length, in the course of time the mighty 
art was lost." 

"In wisdom is to be found every work without exception," 
says Kreeshna. 

"Although thou wert the greatest of all offenders, thou 
shalt be able to cross the gulf of sin with the bark of wisdom." 

"There is not anything in this world to be compared with 
'wdsdom for purity." 

"The action stands at a distance inferior to the application 
of wisdom." 

The wisdom of a Moonee "is confirmed, when, like the 
tortoise, he can draw in all his members, and restrain them 
from their wonted purposes." 

"Children only, and not the learned, speak of the specula- 
tive and the practical doctrines as two. They are but one. 
For both obtain the self-same end, and the place which is 
gained by the followers of the one, is gained by the followers 
of the other." 

"The man enjoyeth not freedom from action, from the 
non-commencement of that which he hath to do ; nor doth 
he obtain happiness from a total inactivity. No one ever 
resteth a moment inactive. Every man is involuntarily 
urged to act by those principles which are inherent in his 
nature. The man who restraineth his active faculties, and 
sitteth down with his mind attentive to the objects of his 
senses, is called one of an astrayed soul, and the practiser of 
deceit. So the man is praised, who, having subdued all his 
passions, performeth with his active faculties all the functions 
of life, unconcerned about the event." 

"Let the motive be in the deed and not in the event. Be 
not one whose motive for action is the hope of reward. Let 
not thy life be spent in inaction." 

"For the man who doeth that which he hath to do, without 
affection, obtaineth the Supreme." 



100 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

"He who may behold, as it were inaction in action, and 
action in inaction, is wise amongst mankind. He is a per- 
fect performer of all duty." 

"Wise men call him a Pandeet, whose every midertaking 
is free from the idea of desire, and whose actions are consmned 
by the fire of wisdom. He abandoneth the desire of a reward 
of his actions; he is always contented and independent; 
and although he may be engaged in a work, he, as it were, 
doeth nothing." 

"He is both a Yogee and a Sannyasee who performeth 
that which he hath to do independent of the fruit thereof; 
not he who liveth without the sacrificial fire and without 
action." 

"He who enjoyeth but the Amreeta which is left of his 
offerings, obtaineth the eternal spirit of Brahm, the Su- 
preme." 

What after all does the practicalness of life amount to? 
The things immediate to be done are very trivial. I could 
postpone them all to hear this locust sing. The most glorious 
fact in our experience is not anything that we have done or 
may hope to do, but a transient thought, or vision, or dream, 
which we have had. I would give all the wealth of the world, 
and all the deeds of all the heroes, for one true vision. But 
how can I communicate with the gods who am a pencil-maker 
on the earth, and not be insane? 

"I am the same to all mankind," says Kreeshna; "There 
is not one who is worthy of my love or hatred." 

This teaching is not practical in the sense in which the 
New Testament is. It is not always sound sense in practice. 
The Brahman never proposes courageously to assault evil, 
but patiently to starve it out. His active faculties are 
paralyzed by the idea of caste, of impassable limits, of destiny, 
and the tyranny of time. Kreeshna's argument, it must be 
allowed, is defective. No sufiicient reason is given why 
Arjoon should fight. Arjoon may be convinced, but the 
reader is not, for his judgment is not "formed upon specula- 
tive doctrines of the Sankhya SastraJ' "Seek an asylum 
in wisdom alone," — but what is wisdom to a western mind? 
He speaks of duty, but the duty of which he speaks, is it not 
an arbitrary one? When was it established? The Brah- 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 101 

man's virtue consists not in doing right, but arbitrary things. 
What is that which a man*" hath to do " ? What is " action " ? 
What are the "settled functions"? What is "a man's own 
rehgion," which is so much better than another's? What is 
"a man's own particular calling"? What are the duties 
which are appointed by one's birth? It is in fact a defence 
of the institution of caste, of what is called the "natural 
duty" of the Kshetree, or soldier, "to attach himself to the 
disciphne," "not to flee from the field," and the like. But 
they who are unconcerned about the consequences of their 
actions, are not therefore unconcerned about their actions. 
— Yet we know not where we should look for a loftier specula- 
tive faith. 

Behold the difference between the oriental and the occi- 
dental. The former has nothing to do in this world; the 
latter is full of activity. The one looks in the sun till his eyes 
are put out; the other follows him prone in his westward 
course. There is such a thing as caste, even in the West; 
but it is comparatively faint. It is conservatism here. It 
says forsake not your calling, outrage no institution, use no 
violence, rend no bonds. The State is thy parent. Its 
virtue or manhood is wholly fihal. There is a struggle be- 
tween the oriental and occidental in every nation ; some who 
would be forever contemplating the sun, and some who are 
hastening toward the sunset. The former class says to the 
latter, When you have reached the sunset, you will be no 
nearer to the sun. To which the latter repHes, But we so 
prolong the day. The former "walketh but in that night, 
when all things go to rest, the night of time. The contem- 
plative Moonee sleepeth but in the day of time when all 
things wake." 

To conclude these extracts, I can say, in the words of 
San jay, "As, mighty Prince! I recollect again and again 
this holy and wonderful dialogue of Kreeshna and Arjoon, 
I continue more and more to rejoice ; and as I recall to my 
memory the more than miraculous form of Haree, my as- 
tonishment is great, and I marvel and rejoice again and 
again! Wherever Kreeshna the God of devotion may be, 
wherever Arjoon the mighty bowman may be, there too, 
without doubt, are fortune, riches, victory, and good conduct. 
This is my firm belief." 

I would say to the readers of Scriptures, if they wish for 



102 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

a good book to read, read the Bhagvat-Geeta, an episode to 
the Mahabharat, said to have been written by Kreeshna Dwy- 

payen Veias, — known to have been written by , more 

than four thousand years ago, — it matters not whether 
three or four, or when, — translated by Charles Wilkins. 
It deserves to be read with reverence even by Yankees, as a 
part of the sacred writings of a devout people ; and the intelli- 
gent Hebrew will rejoice to find in it a moral grandeur and 
sublimity akin to those of his own Scriptures. 

To an American reader, who, by the advantage of his 
position, can see over that strip of Atlantic coast to Asia 
and the Pacific, who, as it were, sees the shore slope upward 
over the Alps to the Himmaleh mountains, the comparatively 
recent literature of Europe often appears partial and clannish, 
and, notwithstanding the limited range of his own sym- 
pathies and studies, the European writer who presumes that 
he is speaking for the world, is perceived by him to speak 
only for that comer of it which he inhabits. One of the 
rarest of England's scholars and critics, in his classification 
of the worthies of the world, betrays the narrowness of his 
European culture and the exclusiveness of his reading. None 
of her children has done justice to the poets and philosophers 
of Persia or of India. They have been better known to her 
merchant scholars than to her poets and thinkers by pro- 
fession. You may look in vain through English poetry for 
a single memorable verse inspired by these themes. Nor is 
Germany to be excepted, though her philological industry 
is indirectly serving the cause of philosophy and poetry. 
Even Goethe, one would say, wanted that universality of 
genius which could have appreciated the philosophy of India, 
if he had more nearly approached it. His genius was more 
practical, dwelling much more in the regions of the under- 
standing, and less native to contemplation, than the genius 
of those sages. It is remarkable that Homer and a few He- 
brews are the most oriental names which modern Europe, 
whose literature has taken its rise since the decUne of the 
Persian, has admitted into her list of Worthies, and perhaps 
the worthiest of mankind, and the fathers of modern thinking, 
— for the contemplations of those Indian sages have influ- 
enced the intellectual development of mankind, — whose 
works even yet survive in wonderful completeness, are, for 
the most part, not recognized as ever having existed. If 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 103 

the lions had been the painters it would have been otherwise. 
In every one's youthful dreams philosophy is still vaguely 
but inseparably, and with singular truth, associated with the 
East, nor do after years discover its local habitation in the 
Western world. In comparison with the philosophers of the 
East we may say that modern Europe has yet given birth to 
none. Beside the vast and cosmogonal philosophy of the 
Bhagvat-Geeta, even our Shakespeare seems sometimes 
youthfully green and practical merely. Some of these sub- 
lime sentences, as the Chaldsean oracles of Zoroaster, for 
instance, still surviving after a thousand revolutions and trans- 
lations, make us doubt if the poetic form and dress are not 
transitory, and not essential to the most effective and endur- 
ing expression of thought. Ex oriente lux may still be the 
motto of scholars, for the Western world has not yet derived 
from the East all the light which it is destined to receive 
thence. 

It would be worthy of the age to print together the col- 
lected Scriptures of Sacred Writings of the several nations, 
the Chinese, the Hindoos, the Persians, the Hebrews, and 
others, as the Scripture of mankind. The New Testament 
is still, perhaps, too much on the lips and in the hearts of men 
to be called a Scripture in this sense. Such a juxtaposition 
and comparison might help to liberalize the faith of men. 
This is a work which Time will surely edit, reserved to crown 
the labors of the printing press. This would be the Bible, 
or Book of Books, which let the missionaries carry to the 
uttermost parts of the earth. 

While engaged in these reflections, thinking ourselves the 
only navigators of these waters, suddenly a canal boat, with 
its sail set, glided round a point before us, like some huge 
river beast, and changed the scene in an instant; and then 
another and another glided into sight, and we found ourselves 
in the current of commerce once more. So we threw our 
rinds into the water for the fishes to nibble, and added our 
breath to the life of living men. Little did we think in the 
distant garden in which we had planted the seed and reared 
this fruit, where it would be eaten. Our melons lay at home 
on the sandy bottom of the Merrimack, and our potatoes 
in the sun and water at the bottom of the boat looked like 
a fruit of the country. Soon, however, we were delivered 



104 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

from this fleet of junks, and possessed the river in sohtude, 
rowing steadily upward through the noon, between the 
territories of Nashua on the one hand, and Hudson, once 
Nottingham, on the other ; from time to time scaring up a 
king-fisher or a summer duck, the former flying rather by 
vigorous impulses, than by steady and patient steering with 
that short rudder of his, sounding his rattle along the fluvial 
street. 

Ere long another scow hove in sight, creeping down the 
river, and hailing it, we attached ourselves to its side, and 
floated back in company, chatting with the boatmen, and 
obtaining a draught of cooler water from their jug. They 
appeared to be green hands from far among the hills, who 
had taken this means to get to the seaboard, and see the 
world ; and would possibly visit the Falkland Isles, and the 
China seas, before they again saw the waters of the Merri- 
mack, or perchance, not return this way forever. They 
had already embarked the private interests of the landsman 
in the larger venture of the race, and were ready to mess with 
mankind, reserving only the till of a chest to themselves. 
But they too were soon lost behind a point, and we went 
croaking on our way alone. What grievance has its root 
among the New Hampshire hills ? we asked ; what is want- 
ing to human life here, that these men should make such haste 
to the antipodes? We prayed that their bright anticipations 
might not be rudely disappointed. 

Though all the fates should prove unkind. 
Leave not your native land behind. 
The ship, becalmed, at length stands still ; 
The steed must rest beneath the hill ; 
But swiftly still our fortunes pace. 
To find us out in every place. 

The vessel, though her masts be firm, 
Beneath her copper bears a worm ; 
Around the cape, across the line. 
Till fields of ice her course confine ; 
It matters not how smooth the breeze, 
How shallow or how deep the seas. 
Whether she bears Manilla twine. 
Or in her hold Madeira wine, 
Or China teas, or Spanish hides. 
In port or quarantine she rides ; 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 105 

Far from New England's blustering shore, 
New England's worm her hulk shall bore, 
And sink her in the Indian seas, 
Twine, wine, and hides, and China teas. 

We passed a small desert here on the east bank, between 
Tyngsboro' and Hudson, which was interesting and even 
refreshing to our eyes in the midst of the almost universal 
greenness. This sand was indeed somewhat impressive and 
beautiful to us. A very old inhabitant, who was at work in 
a field on the Nashua side, told us that he remembered when 
corn and grain grew there, and it was a cultivated field. But 
at length the fishermen, for this was a fishing place, pulled 
up the bushes on the shore, for greater convenience in hauling 
their seines, and when the bank was thus broken, the wind 
began to blow up the sand from the shore, until at length 
it had covered about fifteen acres several feet deep. We 
saw near the river, where the sand was blown off down to 
some ancient surface, the foundation of an Indian wigwam 
exposed, a perfect circle of burnt stones four or five feet in 
diameter, mingled with fine charcoal and the bones of small 
animals, which had been preserved in the sand. The sur- 
rounding sand was sprinkled with other burnt stones on which 
their fires had been built, as well as with flakes of arrow- 
head ^one, and we found one perfect arrow-head. In one 
place we noticed where an Indian had sat to manufacture 
arrow-heads out of quartz, and the sand was sprinkled with 
a quart of small glass-like chips about as big as a fourpence, 
which he had broken off in his work. Here, then, the Indians 
must have fished before the whites arrived. There was 
another similar sandy tract about half a mile above this. 

Still the noon prevailed, and we turned the prow aside 
to bathe, and recline ourselves under some buttonwoods 
by a ledge of rocks, in a retired pasture, sloping to the water's 
edge, and skirted with pines and hazels, in the town of Hud- 
son. Still had India, and that old noontide philosophy, the 
better part of our thoughts. 

It is always singular, but encouraging, to meet with com- 
mon sense in very old books, as the Heetopades of Veeshnoo 
Sarma; a playful wisdom which has eyes behind as well as 
before, and oversees itself. It asserts their health and 
independence of the experience of later times. This pledge 



106 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

of sanity cannot be spared in a book, that it sometimes pleas- 
antly reflect upon itself. The story and fabulous portion of 
this book winds loosely from sentence to sentence as so many 
oases in a desert, and is as indistinct as a camel's track be- 
tween Mourzouk and Darfour. It is a comment on the flow 
and freshet of modern books. The reader leaps from sen- 
tence to sentence, as from one stepping-stone to another, 
while the stream of the story rushes past unregarded. The 
Bhagvat-Geeta is less sententious and poetic, perhaps, but 
still more wonderfully sustained and developed. Its sanity 
and sublimity have impressed the minds even of soldiers 
and merchants. It is the characteristic of great poems that 
they will yield of their sense in due proportion to the hasty 
and the deliberate reader. To the practical they ^dll be com- 
mon sense, and to the wise wisdom ; as either the traveller 
may wet his lips, or an army may fill its water casks at a 
full stream. 

One of the most attractive of those ancient books that I 
have met with is the Laws of Menu. According to Sir Wil- 
liam Jones, "Vyasa, the son of Parasara, has decided that 
the Veda, with its Angas, or the six compositions deduced 
from it, the revealed system of medicine, the Puranas, or 
sacred histories, and the code of Menu, were four works of 
supreme authority, which ought never to be shaken by argu- 
ments merely human." The last is believed by the Hin- 
doos "to have been promulgated in the beginning of time, by 
Menu, son or grandson of Brahma," and "first of created 
beings"; and Brahma is said to have "taught his laws to 
Menu in a hundred thousand verses, which Menu explained 
to the primitive world in the very words of the book now 
translated." Others affirm that they have undergone suc- 
cessive abridgments for the convenience of mortals, "while 
the gods of the lower heaven, and the band of celestial musi- 
cians, are engaged in studying the primary code." — "A 
number of glosses or comments on Menu were composed by 
the Muliis, or old philosophers, whose treatises, together 
with that before us, constitute the Dherma Sastra, in a 
collective sense, or Body of Law." CuUuca Bhatta was 
one of the more modern of these. 

Every sacred book, successively, seems to have been ac- 
cepted in the faith that it was to be the final resting-place of 
the sojournmg soul; but after all, it is but a caravansary 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 107 

which supplies refreshment to the traveller, and directs him 
farther on his way to Isphahan or Bagdat. Thank God, 
no Hindoo tj^anny prevailed at the framing of the world, 
but we are freemen of the universe, and not sentenced to any 
caste. 

I know of no book which has come down to us with grander 
pretensions than this, and it is so impersonal and sincere that 
it is never offensive nor ridiculous. Compare the modes 
in which modern literature is advertised with the prospectus 
of this book, and think what a reading public it addresses, 
what criticism it expects. It seems to have been uttered 
from some eastern summit, with a sober morning prescience 
in the dawn of time, and you cannot read a sentence without 
being elevated as upon the table-land of the Ghauts. It 
has such a rhythm as the winds of the desert, such a tide as 
the Ganges, and is as superior to criticism as the Himmaleh 
mountains. Its tone is of such unrelaxed fibre, that even 
at this late day, unworn by time, it wears the English and 
the Sanscrit dress indifferently, and its fixed sentences keep 
up their distant fires still like the stars, by whose dissipated 
rays this lower w^orld is illumined. The whole book by noble 
gestures and inclinations seems to render many words unneces- 
sary. English sense has toiled, but Hindoo wisdom never 
perspired. The sentences open, as we read them, unex- 
pensively, and, at first, almost unmeaningly, as the petals 
of a flower, yet they sometimes startle us with that rare kind 
of wisdom which could only have been learned from the most 
tri\dal experience ; but it comes to us as refined as the porce- 
lain earth which subsides to the bottom of the ocean. They 
are clean and dry as fossil truths, which have been exposed 
to the elements for thousands of years, so impersonally and 
scientifically true that they are the ornament of the parlor 
and the cabinet. Any moral philosophy is exceedingly rare. 
This of Menu addresses our privacy more than most. It is a 
more private and familiar, and, at the same time, a more 
public and universal word than is spoken in parlor or pulpit 
now-a-days. As our domestic fowls are said to have their 
original in the wild pheasant of India, so our domestic thoughts 
have their prototypes in the thoughts of her philosophers. 
We seem to be dabbling in the very elements of our present 
conventional and actual life ; as if it were the primeval con- 
venticle where how to eat and to drink and to sleep, and 



108 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

maintain life with adequate dignity and sincerity, were the 
questions to be decided. It is later and more intimate even 
than the advice of our nearest friends. And yet it is true for 
the widest horizon, and read out of doors has relation to the 
dim mountain line, and is native and aboriginal there. Most 
books belong to the house and street only, and in the fields 
their leaves feel very thin. They are bare and obvious, and 
have no halo nor haze about them. Nature lies far and fair 
behind them all. But this, as it proceeds from, so does it 
address what is deepest and most abiding in man. It belongs 
to the noontide of the day, the midsummer of the year, and 
after the snows have melted, and the waters evaporated in 
the spring, still its truth speaks freshly to our experience. 
It helps the sun to shine, and his rays fall on its page to illus- 
trate it. It spends the mornings and the evenings, and makes 
such an impression on us over night as to awaken us before 
dawn, and its influence lingers around us like a fragrance 
late into the day. It conveys a new gloss to the meadows 
and the depths of the wood. Its spirit, like a more subtile 
ether, sweeps along with the prevailing winds of a country, 
and the very locusts and crickets of a summer day are but 
later or earlier glosses on the Dherma Sastra of the Hindoos, 
a continuation of the sacred code. As we have said, there 
is an orientalism in the most restless pioneer, and the farthest 
west is but the farthest east. This fair modern world is 
only a reprint of the Laws of Menu with the gloss of Culluca. 
Tried by a New England eye, or the niere practical wisdom 
of modern times, they are the oracles of a race already in its 
dotage, but held up to the sky, which is the only impartial 
and incorruptible ordeal, they are of a piece with its depth 
and serenity, and I am assured that they will have a place 
and significance as long as there is a sky to test them by. 

Give me a sentence which no inteUigence can understand. 
There must be a kind of life and palpitation to it, and under 
its words a kind of blood must circulate forever. It is won- 
derful that this sound should have come down to us from so 
far, when the voice of man can be heard so little way, and we 
are not now within ear-shot of any contemporary. The 
woodcutters have here felled an ancient pine forest, and 
brought to light to these distant hills a fair lake in the south- 
west ; and now in an instant it is distinctly shown to these 
woods as if its image had travelled hither from eternity. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 109 

Perhaps these old stumps upon the knoll remember when 
anciently this lake gleamed in the horizon. One wonders 
if the bare earth itself did not experience emotion at behold- 
ing again so fair a prospect. That fair water lies there in 
the sun thus revealed, so much the prouder and fairer because 
its beauty needed not to be seen. It seems yet lonely, suffi- 
cient to itself, and superior to observation. — So are these 
old sentences like serene lakes in the southwest, at length 
revealed to us, which have so long been reflecting our own 
sky in their bosom. 

The great plain of India lies as in a cup between the Him- 
maleh and the ocean on the north and south, and the Brah- 
mapootra and Indus', on the east and west, wherein the pri- 
meval race was received. We will not dispute the story. We 
are pleased to read in the natural history of the country, of 
the "pine, larch, spruce, and silver fir," which cover the 
southern face of the Himmaleh range; of the "gooseberry, 
raspberry, strawberry," which from an imminent temperate 
zone overlook the torrid plains. So did this active modern 
life have even then a foothold and lurking place in the midst 
of the stateliness and contemplativeness of those eastern 
plains. In another era the "lily-of-the- valley, cowslip, 
dandelion," were to work their way down into the plain, and 
bloom in a level zone of their own reaching round the earth. 
Already has the era of the temperate zone arrived, the era 
of the pine and the oak, for the palm and the banian do not 
supply the wants of this age. The lichens on the summits 
of the rocks will perchance find their level ere long. 

As for the tenets of the Brahmans, we are not so much 
concerned to know what doctrines they held, as that they were 
held by any. We can tolerate all philosophies, Atomists, 
Pneumatologists, Atheists, Theists, — Plato, Aristotle, Leu- 
cippus, Democritus, Pythagoras, Zoroaster, and Confucius. 
It is the attitude of these men, more than any communica- 
tion which they make, that attracts us. Between these and 
their commentators, it is true, there is an endless dispute. 
But if it comes to this that you compare notes, then you are 
all wrong. As it is, each takes us up into the serene heavens, 
whither the smallest bubble rises as surely as the largest, 
and paints earth and sky for us. Any sincere thought is 
irresistible. The very austerity of the Brahmans is tempting 
to the devotional soul, as a more refined and nobler luxury. 



no A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

Wants so easily and gracefully satisfied seem like a more 
refined pleasure. Their conception of creation is peaceful 
as a dream. ''When that power awakes, then has this world 
its full expansion; but when he slumbers with a tranquil 
spirit, then the whole system fades away." In the very 
indistinctness of their theogony a sublime truth is implied. 
It hardly alllows the reader to rest in any supreme first cause, 
but directly it hints at a supremer still which created the last, 
and the Creator is still behind increate. 

Nor will we disturb the antiquity of this Scripture ; "From 
fire, from air, and from the sun," it was "milked out." One 
might as well investigate the chronology of light and heat. 
Let the sun shine. Menu understood this matter best, when 
he said, "Those best know the divisions of days and nights 
who understand that the day of Brahma, which endures to 
the end of a thousand such ages, [infinite ages, nevertheless, 
according to mortal reckoning], gives rise to virtuous exer- 
tions; and that his night endures as long as his day." Indeed, 
the Mussulman and Tartar dynasties are beyond all dating. 
Methinks I have lived under them myself. In every man's 
brain is the Sanscrit. The Vedas and their Angas are not 
so ancient as serene contemplation. Why will we be imposed 
on by antiquity? Is the babe young? When I behold it, 
it seems more venerable than the oldest man; it is more 
ancient than Nestor or the Sibyls, and bears the wrinkles of 
father Saturn himself. And do we live but in the present? 
How broad a hne is that? I sit now on a stump whose rings 
number centuries of growth. If I look around I see that the 
soil is composed of the remains of just such stumps, ancestors 
to this. The earth is covered with mould. I thrust this 
stick many aeons deep into its surface, and with my heel 
make a deeper furrow than the elements have plowed here 
for a thousand years. If I listen, I hear the peep of frogs 
which is older than the slime of Egypt, and the distant drum- 
ming of a partridge on a log, as if it were the pulse beat of 
the summer air. I raise my fairest and freshest flowers 
in the old mould. Why, what we would fain call new is not 
skin deep ; the earth is not yet stained by it. It is not the 
fertile ground which we walk on, but the leaves that flutter 
over our heads. The newest is but the oldest made visible 
to our senses. When we dig up the soil from a thousand feet 
below the surface, we call it new, and the plants which spring 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 111 

from it; and when our vision pierces deeper into space, 
and detects a remoter star, we call that new also. The place 
where we sit is called Hudson, — once it was Nottingham, 
— once — 

We should read history as little critically as we consider 
the landscape, and be more interested by the atmospheric 
tints and various lights and shades which the intervening 
spaces create, than by its groundwork and composition. It 
is the morning now turned evening and seen in the west, — 
the same sun, but a new hght and atmosphere. Its beauty 
is like the sunset ; not a fresco painting on a waU, flat and 
bounded, but atmospheric and roving or free. In reality, 
history fluctuates as the face of the landscape from morning 
to evening. W^at is of moment is its hue and color. Time 
hides no treasures; we want not its then, but its now. We 
do not complain that the mountains in the horizon are blue 
and indistinct ; they are the more hke the heavens. 

Of what moment are facts that can be lost, — which need 
to be commemorated? The monument of death will outlast 
the memory of the dead. The pyramids do not tell us the 
tale that was confided to them ; the living fact commemorates 
itself. Why look in the dark for light? Strictly speaking, 
the historical societies have not recovered one fact from 
obUvion, but are themselves, instead of the fact, that is lost. 
The researcher is more memorable than the researched. 
The crowd stood admiring the mist and the dim outlines of 
the trees seen through it, when one of their number advanced 
to explore the phenomenon, and with fresh admiration all 
eyes were turned on his dimly retreating figure. It is aston- 
ishing with how little cooperation of the societies the past is 
remembered. Its story has indeed had another muse than 
has been assigned it. There is a good instance of the manner 
in which all history began, in Alwakidis' Arabian Chronicle, 
"I was informed by Ahmed Almatin Aljorhami, who had it 
from Rephda Ebn Kais AWniri, who had it from Saiph Ebn 
Fabalah AlcMtquarmi, who had it from Thabet Ebn Alkamah, 
who said he was present at the action." These fathers of 
history were not anxious to preserve, but to learn the fact ; 
and hence it was not forgotten. Critical acumen is exerted 
in vain to uncover the past; the past cannot be presented; 
we cannot know what we are not. But one veil hangs over 



112 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

past, present, and future, and it is the province of the his- 
torian to find out, not what was, but what is. Where a battle 
has been fought, you will find nothing but the bones of men 
and beasts ; where a battle is being fought, there are hearts 
beating. We will sit on a mound and muse, and not try to 
make these skeletons stand on their legs again. Does Nature 
remember, think you, that they were men, or not rather that 
they are bones? 

Ancient history has an air of antiquity. It should be 
more modern. It is written as if the spectator should be 
thinking of the back-side of the picture on the wall, or as if 
the author expected that the dead would be his readers, and 
wished to detail to them their own experience. Men seem 
anxious to accomplish an orderly retreat through the centuries, 
earnestly rebuilding the works behind, as they are battered 
down by the encroachments of time ; but while they loiter, 
they and their works both fall a prey to the arch enemy. 
History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the 
freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the 
beginning of things, which natural history might with reason 
assume to do ; but consider the Universal History, and then 
tell us — when did burdock and plantain sprout first? It 
has been so written for the most part, that the times it de- 
scribes are with remarkable propriety called dark ages. They 
are dark, as one has observed, because we are so in the dark 
about them. The sun rarely shines in history, what with 
the dust and confusion ; and when we meet with any cheering 
fact which imphes the presence of this luminary, we excerpt 
and modernize it. As when we read in the history of the 
Saxons that Edwin of Northmnbria "caused stakes to be 
fixed in the highways where he had seen a clear spring," and 
"brazen dishes were chained to them, to refresh the weary 
sojourner, whose fatigues Edwin had himself experienced." 
This is worth all Arthur's twelve battles. 

" Through the shadow of the globe we sweep into the younger day ; 
Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay. 
Than fifty years of Europe better one New England ray !" 

Biography, too, is liable to the same objection; it should 
be autobiography. Let us not, as the Germans advise, 
endeavor to go abroad and vex our bowels that we may be 
somebody else to explain him. If I am not I, who will be ? 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 113 

But it is fit that the Past should be dark; though the 
darkness is not so much a quahty of the past as of tradition. 
It is not a distance of time, but a distance of relation, which 
makes thus dusky its memorials. What is near to the heart 
of this generation is fair and bright still. Greece lies out- 
spread fair and sunshiny in floods of Hght, for there is the 
sun and dayUght in her literature and art. Homer does not 
allow us to forget that the sun shone, — nor Pliidias, nor the 
Parthenon. Yet no era has been wholly dark, nor will we 
too hastily submit to the historian, and congratulate ourselves 
on a blaze of hght. If we could pierce the obscurity of 
those remote years, we should find it hght enough; only 
there is not our day. Some creatures are made to see in the 
dark. There has always been the same amount of hght in 
the world. The new and missing stars, the comets and 
echpses, do not affect the general illumination, for only our 
'glasses appreciate them. The eyes of the oldest fossil re- 
mains, they tell us, indicate that the same laws of hght pre- 
vailed then as now. Always the laws of light are the same, 
but the modes and degrees of seeing vary. The gods are 
partial to no era, but steadily shines their light in the heavens, 
while the eye of the beholder is turned to stone. There was 
but the Sim and the eye from the first. The ages have not 
added a new ray to the one, nor altered a fibre of the other. 

If we will admit time into our thoughts at all, the mythol- 
ogies, those vestiges of ancient poems, wrecks of poems, so 
to speak, the world's inheritance, still reflecting some of their 
original splendor, hke the fragments of clouds tinted by the 
rays of the departed sun; reaching into the latest summer 
day, and allying this hour to the morning of creation ; as the 
poet sings : — 

''Fragments of the lofty strain 
Float down the tide of years, 
As buoyant on the stormy main 
A parted wreck appears ;" — 

these are the materials and hints for a history of the rise and 
progress of the race; how, from the condition of ants, it 
arrived at the condition of men, and arts were gradually 
invented. Let a thousand surmises shed some hght on this 
story. We will not be confined by historical, even geological 
periods, which would allow us to doubt of a progress in human 
affairs. If we rise above this wisdom for the day, we shall 



114 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

expect that this morning of the race, in which it has been 
supplied with the simplest necessaries, with corn, and wine, 
and honey, and oil, and fire, and articulate speech, and agri- 
cultural and other arts, reared up, by degrees, from the condi- 
tion of ants, to men, will be succeeded by a day of equally 
progressive splendor ; that, in the lapse of the divine periods, 
other divine agents and godlike men will assist to elevate 
the race as much above its present condition. But we do 
not know much about it. 

Thus did one voyageur waking dream, while his companion 
slumbered on the bank. Suddenly, a boatman's horn was 
heard, echoing from shore to shore, to give notice of his ap- 
proach to the farmer's wife, with whom he was to take his 
dinner, though in that place only muskrats and king-fishers 
seemed to hear. The current of our reflections and our 
slmnbers being thus disturbed, we weighed anchor once more. 

As we proceeded on our way in the afternoon, the western 
bank became lower, or receded further from the channel 
in some places, leaving a few trees only to fringe the water's 
edge ; while the eastern rose abruptly here and there into 
wooded hills fifty or sixty feet high. The bass, tilia Ameri- 
cana, also called the lime or hnden, which was a new tree to 
us, overhung the water with its broad and rounded leaf, 
interspersed with clusters of small hard berries, now nearly 
ripe, and made an agreeable shade for us sailors. The inner 
bark of this genus is the bast, the material of the fisherman's 
matting, and the ropes, and peasant's shoes, of which the 
Russians make so much use, and also of nets and a coarse 
cloth in some places. According to poets, this was once 
Philyra, one of the Oceanides. The ancients are said to have 
used its bark for the roofs of cottages, for baskets, and for 
a kind of paper called Philyra. They also made bucklers 
of its wood, ''on account of its fiexibility, lightness, and resil- 
iency." It was once much used for carving, and is still in 
demand for panels of carriages, and for various uses for which 
toughness and flexibihty are required. Its sap affords sugar, 
and the honey made from its flowers is said to be preferred 
to any other. Its leaves are in some countries given to cattle, 
a kind of chocolate has been made of its fruit, a medicine 
has been prepared from an infusion of its flowers, and finally, 
the charcoal made of its wood is greatly valued for gunpowder. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 115 

The sight of this tree reminded us that we had reached a 
strange land to us. As we sailed under this canopy of leaves 
we saw the sky through its chinks, and, as it were, the meaning 
and idea of the tree stamped in a thousand hieroglyphics 
on the heavens. The universe is so aptly fitted to our or- 
ganization, that the eye wanders and reposes at the same 
time. On every side there is something to soothe and refresh 
this sense. Look up at the tree-tops and see how finely 
Nature finishes off her work there. See how the pines spire 
without end higher and higher, and make a graceful fringe 
to the earth. And who shall count the finer cobwebs that 
soar and float away from their utmost tops, and the myriad 
insects that dodge between them. Leaves are of more va- 
rious forms than the alphabets of all languages put together ; 
of the oaks alone there are hardly two alike, and each expresses 
its own character. 

In all her products Nature only develops her simplest 
germs. One would say that it was no great stretch of inven- 
tion to create birds. The hawk, which now takes his flight 
over the top of the wood, was at first perchance only a leaf 
which fluttered in its aisles. From rustling leaves she came in 
the course of ages to the loftier flight and clear carol of the bird. 

Salmon Brook comes in from the west under the railroad, 
a mile and a haK below the village of Nashua. We rode up 
far enough into the meadows which border it, to learn its 
piscatorial history from a hay-maker on its banks. He 
told us that the silver eel was formerly abundant here, and 
pointed to some sunken creels at its mouth. This man's 
memory and imagination were fertile in fishermen's tales of 
floating isles in bottomless ponds, and of lakes mysteriously 
stocked with fishes, and would have kept us till night-fall 
to hsten, but we could not afford to loiter in this roadstead, 
and so stood out to our sea again. Though we never trod 
in these meadows, but only touched their margin with our 
hands, we still retain a pleasant memory of them. 

Salmon Brook, whose name is said to be a translation from 
the Indian, was a favorite haunt of the aborigines. Here 
too the first white settlers of Nashua planted, and some dents 
in the earth, where their houses stood, and the wrecks of 
ancient apple trees, are still visible. About one mile up this 
stream stood the house of old John Lovewell, who was an 
ensign in the army of Ohver Cromwell, and the father of 



116 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

"famous Captain Lovewell." He settled here before 1690, 
and died about 1754, at the age of one hundred and twenty- 
years. He is thought to have been engaged in the famous 
Narragansett swamp fight, which took place in 1675, before 
he came here. The Indians are said to have spared him in 
succeeding wars on account of his kindness to them. Even 
in 1700 he was so old and gray-headed that his scalp was 
worth nothing, since the French Governor offered no bounty 
for such. I have stood in the dent of his cellar on the bank of 
the brook, and talked there with one whose grandfather had, 
whose father might have, talked with Lovewell. Here also 
he had a mill in his old age, and kept a small store. He was 
remembered by some who were recently li\dng, as a hale old 
man who drove the boys out of his orchard with his cane. — 
Consider the triumphs of the mortal man, and what poor 
trophies it would have to show, to wit: He cobbled shoes 
without glasses at a hundred, and cut a handsome swathe 
at a hundred and five ! — Love well's house is said to have 
been the first which Mrs. Dustin reached on her escape from 
the Indians. Here probably the hero of Pequawket was 
born and bred. Close by may be seen the cellar and the grave- 
stone of Joseph Hassell, who, as was elsewhere recorded, with 
his wife Anna and son Benjamin, and Mary Marks, "were 
slain by our Indian enemies on Sept. 2d [1691] in the evening." 
As Gookin observed on a previous occasion, "The Indian 
rod upon the Enghsh backs had not yet done God's errand.'* 
Salmon Brook near its mouth is still a sohtary stream, mean- 
dering through woods and meadows, while the then unin- 
habited mouth of the Nashua now resounds with the din of 
a manufacturing town. 

A stream from Otternic pond in Hudson comes in just 
above Salmon Brook, on the opposite side. There was a 
good view of Uncannunuc, the most conspicuous mountain 
in these parts, from the bank here, seen rising over the west 
end of the bridge above. We soon after passed the village 
of Nashua, on the river of the same name, where there is a 
covered bridge over the Merrimack. The Nashua, which is 
one of the largest tributaries, flows from Wachusett moun- 
tain, through Lancaster, Groton, and other towns, where it 
has formed well-known elm-shaded meadows, but near its 
mouth it is obstructed by falls and factories, and did not 
tempt us to explore it. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 117 

Far away from here, in Lancaster, with another companion, 
I have crossed the broad valley of the Nashua, over which 
we had so long looked westward from the Concord hills with- 
out seeing it to the blue mountains in the horizon. So many 
streams, so many meadows and woods and quiet dwelhngs 
of men had lain concealed between us and those Delectable 
Mountains ; — from yonder hill on the road to Tyngsboro' 
you may get a good view of them. — There where it seemed 
uninterrupted forest to our youtliful eyes, between two neigh- 
boring pines in the horizon, lay the valley of the Nashua, 
and this very stream was even then winding at its bottom, 
and then, as now, it was here silently minghng its waters 
with the Merrimack. The clouds which floated over its 
meadows and were born there, seen far in the west, gilded 
by the rays of the setting sun, had adorned a thousand even- 
ing skies for us. But as it were by a turf wall this valley 
was concealed, and in our journey to those hills it was first 
gradually revealed to us. Summer and winter our eyes had 
rested on the dim outline of the mountains, to which distance 
and indistinctness lent a grandeur not their own, so that they 
served to interpret all the allusions of poets and travellers. 
Standing on the Concord Chffs we thus spoke our mind to 
them : — 

With frontier strength ye stand your ground. 

With grand content ye circle round. 

Tumultuous silence for all sound, 

Ye distant nursery of rills, 

Monadnock and the Peterboro' hills ; — 

Firm argument that never stirs, 

Outcirchng the philosophers, — 

Like some vast fleet, 

Sailing through rain and sleet, 

Through winter's cold and summer's heat ; 

Still holding on upon your high emprise, 

Until ye find a shore amid the skies ; 

Not skulking close to land, 

With cargo contraband, 

For they who sent a venture out by ye 

Have set the Sun to see 

Their honesty. 

Ships of the Une, each one, 
Ye westward run, 



118 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

Convoying clouds, 

Which cluster in your shrouds, 

Always before the gale, 

Under a press of sail, 

With weight of metal all untold, — 

I seem to feel ye in my firm seat here, 

Immeasurable depth of hold, 

And breadth of beam, and length of running gear. , 

Methinks ye take luxurious pleasure 

In your novel western leisure ; 

So cool your brows and freshly blue, 

As Time had naught for ye to do ; 

For ye He at your length, 

An unappropriated strength, 

Unhewn primeval timber, 

For knees so stiff, for masts so limber ; 

The stock of which new earths are made, 

One day to be our western trade, 

Fit for the stanchions of a world 

Which through the seas of space is hurled. 

While we enjoy a lingering ray, 

Ye still o'ertop the western day. 

Reposing yonder on God's croft 

Like solid stacks of hay ; 

So bold a line as ne'er was writ 

On any page by human wit ; 

The forest glows as if 

An enemy's camp-fires shone 

Along the horizon, 

Or the day's funeral pyre 

Were lighted there ; 

Edged with silver and with gold, 

The clouds hang o'er in damask fold, 

And with such depth of amber light 

The west is dight. 

Where still a few rays slant, 

That even Heaven seems extravagant. 

Watatic Hill 

Lies on the horizon's sill 

Like a child's toy left over night. 

And other duds to left and right, 

On the earth's edge, mountains and trees. 

Stand as they were on air graven, 

Or as the vessels in a haven 

Await the morning breeze. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 119 

I fancy even 

Through your defiles windeth the way to Heaven ; 

And yonder still, in spite of history's page, 

Linger the golden and the silver age ; 

Upon the laboring gale 

The news of future centuries is brought, 

And of new dynasties of thought, 

From your remotest vale. 

But special I remember thee, 

Wachusett, who like me 

Standest alone without society. 

Thy far blue eye, 

A remnant of the sky, 

Seen through the clearing or the gorge, 

Or from the windows of the forge, 

Doth leaven all it passes by. 

Nothing is true 

But stands 'tween me and you. 

Thou western pioneer. 

Who know'st not shame nor fear, 

By venturous spirit driven 

Under the eaves of Heaven ; 

And can'st expand thee there. 

And breathe enough of air? 

Even beyond the West 

Thou migratest, 

Into unclouded tracts, 

Without a pilgrim's axe, 

Cleaving thy road on high 

With thy well-tempered brow, 

And mak'st thyself a clearing in the sky. 

Upholding Heaven, holding down earth. 

Thy pastime from thy birth ; 

Not steadied by the one, nor leaning on the other, 

May I approve myself thy worthy brother ! 

At length, like Rasselas and other inhabitants of happy 
valleys, we had resolved to scale the blue wall which bounded 
the western horizon, though not without misgivings that 
thereafter no visible fairy land would exist for us. But it 
would be long to tell of our adventures, and we have no time 
this afternoon, transporting ourselves in imagination up this 
hazy Nashua valley, to go over again that pilgrimage. We 
have since made many similar excursions to the principal 
mountains of New England and New York, and even far 



120 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

in the wilderness, and have passed a night on the summit of 
many of them. And now when we look again westward from 
our native hills, Wachusett and Monadnock have retreated 
once more among the blue and fabulous mountains in the 
horizon, though our eyes rest on the very rocks on both of 
them, where we have pitched our tent for a night, and boiled 
our hasty-pudding amid the clouds. 

As late as 1724 there was no house on the north side of 
the Nashua, but only scattered wigwams and grisly forests 
between this frontier and Canada. In September of that 
year, two men who were engaged in making turpentine on 
that side, for such were the first enterprises in the wilderness, 
were taken captive and carried to Canada by a party of 
thirty Indians. Ten of the inhabitants of Dunstable going 
to look for them, found the hoops of their barrel cut, and 
the turpentine spread on the ground. I have been told by 
an inhabitant of Tyngsboro', who had the story from his 
ancestors, that one of these captives, when the Indians were 
about to upset his barrel of turpentine, seized a pine knot 
and, flourishing it, swore so resolutelj^ that he would kill the 
first who touched it, that they refrained, and when at length 
he returned from Canada he found it still standing. Perhaps 
there was more than one barrel. — However this may have 
been, the scouts knew by marks on the trees, made with 
coal mixed with grease, that the men were not killed, but 
taken prisoners. One of the company, named Farwell, 
perceiving that the turpentine had not done spreading, 
concluded that the Indians had been gone but a short time, 
and they accordingly went in instant pursuit. Contrary 
to the advice of Farwell, following directly on their trail up 
the Merrimack, they fell into an ambuscade near Thornton's 
Ferry, in the present town of Merrimack, and nine were 
killed, only one, Farwell, escaping after a vigorous pursuit. 
The men of Dunstable went out and picked up their bodies, 
and carried them all down to Dunstable and buried them. 
It is almost word for word as in the Robin Hood ballad : — 

"They carried these foresters into fair Nottingham, 
As many there did know, 
They digg'd them graves in their churchyard, 
And they buried them all a-row." 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 121 

Nottingham is only the other side of the river, and they were 
not exactly all a-row. You may read in the churchyard at 
Dunstable, under the " Memento Mori," and the name of 
one of them, how they '' departed this life," and 

"This man with seven more that lies in 
this grave was slew all in a day by 
the Indians." 

The stones of some others of the company stand around the 
common grave with their separate inscriptions. Eight were 
buried here, but nine were killed, according to the best 
authorities. 

''Gentle river, gentle river, 

Lo, thy streams are stained with gore, 
Many a brave and noble captain 
Floats along thy willowed shore. 

All beside thy limpid waters, 

All beside thy sands so bright, 
Indian Chiefs and Christian warriors 

Joined in fierce and mortal fight." 

It is related in the history of Dunstable, that on the return 
of Farwell the Indians were engaged by a fresh party, which 
they compelled to retreat, and pursued as far as the Nashua, 
where they fought across the stream at its mouth. After 
the departure of the Indians, the figure of an Indian's head 
was found carved by them on a large tree by the shore, which 
circumstance has given its name to this part of the village of 
Nashville, — the "Indian Head." "It was observed by 
some judicious," says Gookin, referring to Philip's war, 
" that at the beginning of the war, the English soldiers made 
a nothing of the Indians, and many spake words to this effect ; 
that one Englishman was sufficient to chase ten Indians; 
many reckoned it was no other but Vent, vidi, vici." But 
we may conclude that the judicious would by this time have 
made a different observation. 

Farwell appears to have been the only one who had studied 
his profession, and understood the business of hunting Indians. 
He lived to fight another day, for the next year he was Love- 
well's Lieutenant at Pequawket, but that time, as we have 
related, left his bones in the wilderness. His name still 



122 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

reminds us of twilight days and forest scouts on Indian trails, 
with an uneasy scalp; — an indispensable hero to New 
England. As the more recent poet of Lovewell's fight has 
sung, halting a little but bravely still ; — 

"Then did the crimson streams that flowed, 
Seem like the waters of the brook, 
That brightly shine, that loudly dash. 
Far down the cliffs of Agiochook." 

These battles sound incredible to us. I think posterity 
will doubt if such things ever were; if our bold ancestors 
who settled this land were not struggling rather with the 
forest shadows, and not with a copper-colored race of men. 
They were vapors, fever and ague of the unsettled woods. 
Now, only a few arrow-heads are turned up by the plow. 
In the Pelasgic, the Etruscan, or the British story, there is 
nothing so shadowy and unreal. 

It is a wild and antiquated looking grave-yard, overgrown 
with bushes, on the high road, about a quarter of a mile from 
and overlooking the Merrimack, with a deserted mill stream 
bounding it on one side, where lie the earthly remains of 
the ancient inhabitants of Dunstable. We passed it three 
or four miles below here. You may read there the names 
of Lovewell, Farwell, and many others whose families were 
distinguished in Indian warfare. We noticed there two large 
masses of granite more than a foot thick and rudely squared, 
lying flat on the ground over the remains of the first pastor 
and his wife. 

It is remarkable that the dead lie everywhere under 
stones, — 

** Strata jacent passim suo quaeque sub" lapide — 

corpora, we might say, if the measure allowed. When the 
stone is a slight one, and stands upright, pointing to the skies, 
it does not oppress the spirits of the traveller to meditate by 
it; but these did seem a little heathenish to us; and so 
are all large monuments over men's bodies, from the pyra- 
mids down. A monument should at least be " star-y-point- 
ing," to indicate whither the spirit is gone, and not prostrate, 
like the body it has deserted. There have been some nations 
who could do nothing but construct tombs, and these are 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 123 

the only traces which they have left. They are the heathen. 
But why these stones, so upright and emphatic, like ex- 
clamation points! What was there so remarkable that 
lived? Why should the monument be so much more endur- 
ing than the fame which it is designed to commemorate, — 
a stone to a bone? " Here lies," — '' Here lies " ; — why 
do they not sometimes write. There rises? Is it a monument 
to the body only that is intended? "Having reached the 
term of his natural life ; " — would it not be truer to say, 
Having reached the term of his unnatural life? The rarest 
quality in an epitaph is truth. If any character is given it 
should be as severely true as the decision of the three judges 
below, and not the partial testimony of friends. Friends 
and contemporaries should supply only the name and date, 
and leave it to posterity to write the epitaph. 

Here has an honest man, 

Rear-Admiral Van. 

Faith, then, ye have 

Two in one grave. 

For in his favor. 

Here too lies the Engraver. 

Fame itself is but an epitaph; as late, as false, as true. 
But they only are the true epitaphs which Old Mortality 
retouches. 

A man might well pray that he may not taboo or curse 
any portion of Nature by being buried in it. For the most 
part, the man's spirit makes a fearful sprite to haunt his 
grave, and it is therefore much to the credit of Little John, 
the famous follower of Robin Hood, that his grave was 
*' long celebrous for the yielding of excellent whetstones." 
I confess that I have but little love for such collections as 
they have at the Catacombs, Pere la Chaise, Mount Auburn, 
and even this Dunstable grave-yard. At any rate, nothing 
but great antiquity can make grave-yards interesting to me. 
I have no friends there. It may be that I am not competent 
to write the poetry of the grave. The farmer who has 
skimmed his farm might perchance leave his body to Nature 
to be plowed in, and in some measure restore its fertility. 
We should not retard but forward her economies. 

Soon the village of Nashua was out of sight, and the woods 
were gained again, and we rowed slowly on before sunset, 



124 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

looking for a solitary place in which to spend the night. A 
few evening clouds began to be reflected in the water, and 
the surface was dimpled only here and there by a muskrat 
crossing the stream. We camped at length near Penichook 
Brook, on the confines of Nashville, by a deep ravine, under 
the skirts of a pine wood, where the dead pine leaves were 
our carpet, and their tawny boughs stretched over head. 
But fire and smoke soon tamed the scene; the rocks con- 
sented to be our walls, and the pines our roof. A woodside 
was already the fittest locality for us. 

The wilderness is near, as well as dear, to every man. 
Even the oldest villages are indebted to the border of wild 
wood which surrounds them, more than to the gardens of 
men. There is something indescribably inspiriting and 
beautiful in the aspect of the forest skirting and occasionally 
jutting into the midst of new towns, which, like the sand- 
heaps of fresh fox burrows, have sprung up in their midst. 
The very uprightness of the pines and maples asserts the 
ancient rectitude and vigor of nature. Our lives need the 
relief of such a background, where the pine flourishes and 
the jay still screams. 

We had found a safe harbor for our boat, and as the sun 
was setting carried up our furniture, and soon arranged our 
house upon the bank, and while the kettle steamed at the 
tent door, we chatted of distant friends, and of the sights 
we were to behold, and wondered which way the towns lay 
from us. Our cocoa was soon boiled, and supper set upon 
our chest, and we lengthened out this meal, like old voyageurs, 
with our talk. Meanwhile we spread the map on the ground, 
and read in the gazetteer when the first settlers came here 
and got a township granted. Then, when supper was done, 
and we had written the journal of our voyage, we wrapped 
our buffaloes about us, and lay down with our heads pillowed 
on our arms, listening awhile to the distant baying of a dog, 
or the murmurs of the river, or to the wind, which had not 
gone to rest, — 

The western wind came lumbering in, 
Bearing a faint Pacific din, 
Our evening mail, swift at the call 
Of its Post-Master General ; 
Laden with news from Calif orn', 
Whate'er transpired hath since morn. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 125 

How wags the world by brier and brake 
From hence to Athabasca lake ; — 

or half awake and half asleep, dreaming of a star which 
glimmered through our cotton roof. Perhaps at midnight 
one was awakened by a cricket shrilly singing on his shoulder, 
or by a hunting spider in his eye, and was lulled asleep again 
by some streamlet purling its way along at the bottom of a 
wooded and rocky ravine in our neighborhood. It was 
pleasant to lie with our heads so low in the grass, and hear 
what a tinkling ever-busy laboratory it was. A thousand 
little artisans beat on their anvils all night long. 

Far in the night, as we were falling asleep on the bank 
of the Merrimack, we heard some tyro beating a drum 
incessantly, in preparation for a country muster, as we 
learned, and we thought of the line, 

"When the drum beat at dead of night." 

We could have assured him that his beat would be answered, 
and the forces be mustered. Fear not, thou drummer of 
the night, we too will be there. And still he drummed on 
in the silence of the dark. This stray sound from a far-off 
sphere came to our ears from time to time, far, sweet, and 
significant, and we listened with such an imprejudiced sense 
as if for the first time we heard at all. No doubt he was 
an insignificant drummer enough, but his music afforded 
us a prime and leisure hour, and we felt that we were in 
season wholly. These simple sounds related us to the stars. 
Aye, there was a logic in them so convincing that the com- 
bined sense of mankind could never make me doubt their con- 
clusions. I stop my habitual thinking, as if the plow had 
suddenly run deeper in its furrow through the crust of the 
world. How can I go on, who have just stepped over such 
a bottomless skylight in the bog of my life. Suddenly old 
Time winked at me, — Ah, you know me, you rogue, — and 
news had come that it was well. That ancient universe 
is in such capital health, I think undoubtedly it will never 
die. Heal yourselves, doctors; by God I live. — 

Then idle Time ran gadding by 
And left me with Eternity alone ; 

I hear beyond the range of sound, 

I see beyond the verge of sight, — 



126 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

I see, smell, taste, hear, feel, that everlasting Something to 
which we are allied, at once our maker, our abode, our destiny, 
our very Selves ; the one historic truth, the most remarkable 
fact which can become the distinct and uninvited subject 
of our thought, the actual glory of the universe ;^ the only 
fact which a human being cannot avoid recognizing, or in 
some way forget or dispense with. — 

It doth expand my privacies 
To all, and leave me single in the crowd. 

I have seen how the foimdations of the world are laid, and 
I have not the least doubt that it will stand a good while. 

Now chiefly is my natal hour, 

And only now my prime of life. 

I will not doubt the love untold, 

Which not my worth nor want hath brought, 

Which wooed me young and wooes me old, 

And to this evening hath me brought. 

What are ears? what is Time? that this particular series 
of sounds called a strain of music, an invisible and fairy troop 
which never brushed the dew from any mead, can be wafted 
down through the centuries from Homer to me, and he have 
been conversant with that same aerial and mysterious charm 
which now so tingles my ears? What a fine communication 
from age to age, of the fairest and noblest thoughts, the 
aspirations of ancient men, even such as were never com- 
municated by speech ! It is the flower of language, thought 
colored and curved, fluent and flexible, its crystal fountain 
tinged with the sun's rays, and its purling ripples reflecting 
the grass and the clouds. A strain of music reminds me of 
a passage of the Vedas, and I associate with it the idea of 
infinite remoteness, as well as beauty and serenity, for to 
the senses that is furthest from us which addresses the 
greatest depth within us. It teaches us again and again to 
trust the remotest and finest as the divinest instinct, and 
makes a dream our only real experience. As polishing ex- 
presses the vein in marble and grain in wood, so music brings 
out what of heroic lurks anywhere. The hero is the sole 
patron of music. That harmony which exists naturally 
between the hero's moods and the universe the soldier would 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 127 

fain imitate with drum and trumpet. When we are in 
health all sounds fife and drum for us ; we hear the notes 
of music in the air, or catch its echoes dying away when we 
awake in the dawn. Marching is when the pulse of the hero 
beats in unison with the pulse of Nature, and he steps to the 
measure of the universe ; then there is true courage and 
invincible strength. 

Plutarch says that " Plato thinks the gods never gave 
men music, the science of melody and harmony, for mere 
delectation or to tickle the ear; but that the discordant 
parts of the circulations and beauteous fabric of the soul, 
and that of it that roves about the body, and many times, 
for want of tune and air, breaks forth into many extrava^ 
gances and excesses, might be sweetly recalled and artfully 
wound up to their former consent and agreement." 

Music is the sound of the universal laws promulgated. 
It is the only assured tone. There are in it such strains as 
far surpass any man's faith in the loftiness of his destiny. 
Things are to be learned which it will be worth the while 
to learn. Formerly I heard these 



RUMORS FROM AN ^OLIAN HARP 

There is a vale which none hath seen, 
Where foot of man has never been, 
Such as here Uves with toil and strife, 
An anxious and a sinful life. 



There every virtue has its birth. 
Ere it descends up>on the earth, 
And thither every deed returns, 
Which in the generous bosom burns. 

There love is warm, and youth is young. 
And poetry is yet unsung, 
For Virtue still adventures there, 
And freely breathes her native air. 

And ever, if you hearken well, 
You still Ynsiy hear its vesper bell, 
And tread of high-souled men go by. 
Their thoughts conversing with the sky. 



128 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD ' 

According to Jamblichus, " Pythagoras did not procure 
for himself a thing of this kind through instruments of the 
voice, but employing a certain ineffable divinity, and which 
it is difficult to apprehend, he extended his ears and fixed 
his intellect in the sublime symphonies of the world, he 
alone hearing and understanding, as it appears, the universal 
harmony and consonance of the spheres, and the stars that 
are moved through them, and which produce a fuller and more 
intense melody than anything effected by mortal sounds." 

Travelling on foot very early one morning due east from 
here about twenty miles, from Caleb Harriman's tavern in 
Hampstead toward Haverhill, when I reached the railroad 
in Plaistow, I heard at some distance a faint music in the 
air like an iEolian harp, which I immediately suspected to 
proceed from the cord of the telegraph vibrating in the just 
awakening morning wind, and applying my ear to one of 
the posts I was convinced that it was so. It was the tele- 
graph harp singing its message through the country, its 
message sent not by men but by gods. Perchance, like the 
statue of Memnon, it resounds only in the morning when the 
first rays of the sun fall on it. It was like the first lyre or 
shell heard on the sea-shore, — that vibrating cord high in 
the air over the shores of earth. So have all things their 
higher and their lower uses. I heard a fairer news than the 
journals ever print. It told of things worthy to hear, and 
worthy of the electric fluid to carry the news of, not of the 
price of cotton and flour, but it hinted at the price of the 
world itself and of things which are priceless, of absolute 
truth and beauty. 

Still the drum rolled on, and stirred our blood to fresh 
extravagance that night. The clarion sound and clang of 
corselet and buckler were heard from many a hamlet of the 
soul, and many a knight was arming for the fight behind 
the encamped stars. — 

''Before each van 
Prick forth the aery knights, and couch their spears 
Till thickest legions close ; with feats of arms 
From either end of Heaven the welkin burns." 

Away ! away ! away ! away ! 

Ye have not kept your secret weU, 
I will abide that other day, 

Those other lands ye tell. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 129 

Has time no leisure left for these, 

The acts that ye rehearse ? 
Is not eternity a lease 

For better deeds than verse? 

'T is sweet to hear of heroes dead, 

To know them still alive, 
But sweeter if we earn their bread, 

And in us they survive. 

Our life should feed the springs of fame 

With a perennial wave, 
As ocean feeds the babbling founts 

Which find in it their grave. 

Ye skies drop gently round my breast, 

And be my corselet blue, 
Ye earth receive my lance in rest. 

My faithful charger you ; 

Ye stars my spear-heads in the sky, 

My arrow-tips ye are, — 
I see the routed foemen fly, 

My bright spears fixed are. 

Give me an angel for a foe. 

Fix now the place and time. 
And straight to meet him I will go 

Above the starry chime. 

And with our clashing bucklers' clang 

The heavenly spheres shall ring. 
While bright the northern lights shall hang 

Beside our tourneying. 

And if she lose her champion true. 

Tell Heaven not despair, 
For I will be her champion new, 

Her fame I wiU repair. 

There was a high wind this night, which we afterwards 
learned had been still more violent elsewhere, and had done 
much injury to the corn-fields far and near; but we only 
heard it sigh from time to time, as if it had no license to 
shake the foundations of our tent ; the pines murmured, 
the water rippled, and the tent rocked a little, but we only 
laid our ears closer to the ground while the blast swept on 
to alarm other men, and long before sunrise we were ready 
to pursue our voyage as usual. 



130 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 



TUESDAY 

"On either side the river He 
Long fields of barley and of rye, 
That clothe the wold and meet the sky ; 
And thro' the fields the road runs by 

To many-towered Camelot." 

— Tennyson. 

Long before daylight we ranged abroad with hatchet in 
hand, in search of fuel, and made the yet slumbering and 
dreaming wood resound with our blows. Then with our 
fire we burned up a portion of the loitering night, while 
the kettle sang its homely strain to the morning star. We 
tramped about the shore, waked all the muskrats, and scared 
up the bittern and birds that were asleep upon their roosts ; 
we hauled up and upset our boat, and washed it and rinsed 
out the clay, talking aloud as if it were broad day, until 
at length, by three o'clock, we had completed our prepara- 
tions and were ready to pursue our voyage as usual; so, 
shaking the clay from our feet, we pushed into the fog. 

Though we were enveloped in mist as usual, we trusted 
that there was a bright day behind it. 

Ply the oars ! away ! away ! 
In each dew-drop of the morning 

Lies the promise of a day. 
Rivers from the sunrise flow, 

Springing with the dewy morn ; 
Voyageurs 'gainst time do row, 
Idle noon nor sunset know, 

Ever even with the dawn. 

Belknap, the historian of this State, says that " In the neigh- 
borhood of fresh rivers and ponds, a whitish fog in the morning, 
lying over the water, is a sure indication of fair weather for 
that day ; and when no fog is seen, rain is expected before 
night." That which seemed to us to invest the world, was 
only a narrow and shallow wreath of vapor stretched over 
the channel of the Merrimack from the sea-board to the moun- 
tains. More extensive fogs, however, have their own limits. 
I once saw the day break from the top of Saddle-back Moim- 
tain in Massachusetts, above the clouds. As we cannot dis- 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 131 

tinguish objects through this dense fog, let me tell this story 
more at length. 

I had come over the hills on foot and alone in serene 
summer days, plucking the raspberries by the wayside, 
and occasionally buying a loaf of bread at a farmer's house, 
with a knapsack on my back, which held a few traveller's 
books and a change of clothing, and a staff in my hand. 
I had that morning looked down from the Hoosack Mountain, 
where the road crosses it, on the village of North Adams in 
the valley, three miles away imder my feet, showing how 
uneven the earth may sometimes be, and making it seem 
an accident that it should ever be level and convenient for 
the feet of man. Putting a little rice and sugar and a tin 
cup into my knapsack at this village, I began in the after- 
noon to ascend the mountain, whose summit is three thou- 
sand six hundred feet above the level of the sea, and was 
seven or eight miles distant by the path. My route lay up 
a long and spacious valley called the Bellows, because the 
winds rush up or down it with violence in storms, sloping 
up to the very clouds between the principal range and a 
lower mountain. There were a few farms scattered along 
at different elevations, each commanding a fine prospect 
of the mountains to the north, and a stream ran down the 
middle of the valley, on which near the head there was a mill. 
It seemed a road for the pilgrim to enter upon who would 
climb to the gates of heaven. Now I crossed a hay-field, 
and now over the brook on a slight bridge, still gradually 
ascending all the while, with a sort of awe, and filled with 
indefinite expectations as to what kind of inhabitants and 
what kind of nature I should come to at last. It now seemed 
some advantage that the earth was uneven, for one could 
not imagine a more noble position for a farm-house than this 
vale afforded, further from or nearer to its head, from a glen- 
like seclusion overlooking the country at a great elevation 
between these two mountain walls. 

It reminded me of the homesteads of the Huguenots on 
Staten Island, off the coast of New Jersey. The hills in the 
interior of this island, though comparatively low, are pene- 
trated in various directions by similar sloping valleys on a 
humble scale, gradually narrowing and rising to the centre, 
and at the head of these the Huguenots, who were the first 



132 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

settlers, placed their houses, quite within the land, in rural 
and sheltered places, in leafy recesses where the breeze 
played with the poplar and the gum tree, from which, with 
equal security in calm and storm, they looked out through a 
widening vista, over miles of forest and stretching salt marsh, 
to the Huguenots' Tree, an old elm on the shore at whose 
root they had landed, and across the spacious outer bay of 
New York to Sandy Hook and the Highlands of Neversink, 
and thence over leagues of the Atlantic, perchance to some 
faint vessel in the horizon, almost a day's sail on her voyage 
to that Europe whence they had come. When walking in 
the interior there, in the midst of rural scenery, where there 
was as little to remind me of the ocean as amid the New 
Hampshire hills, I have suddenly, through a gap, a cleft or 
" clove road," as the Dutch settlers called it, caught sight 
of a ship under full sail, over a field of corn, twenty or thirty 
miles at sea. The effect was similar, since I had no means 
of measuring distances, to seeing a painted ship passed back- 
wards and forwards through a magic lantern. 

But to return to the moimtain. It seemed as if he must 
be the most singular and heavenly-minded man whose dwell- 
ing stood highest up the valley. The thunder had rumbled 
at my heels all the way, but the shower passed off in another 
direction, though if it had not, I half believed that I should 
get above it. I at length reached the last house but one, 
where the path to the summit diverged to the right, while 
the summit itself rose directly in front. But I determined 
to follow up the valley to its head, and then find my own 
route up the steep, as the shorter and more adventurous way. 
I had thoughts of returning to this house, which was well 
kept and so nobly placed, the next day, and perhaps remain- 
ing a week there, if I could have entertainment. Its mistress 
was a frank and hospitable young woman, who stood before 
me in a dishabille, busily and unconcernedly combing her long 
black hair while she talked, giving her head the necessary 
toss with each sweep of the comb, with lively, sparkling eyes, 
and full of interest in that lower world from which I had 
come, talking all the while as familiarly as if she had known 
me for years, and reminding me of a cousin of mine. She 
at first had taken me for a student from Williamstown, for 
they went by in parties, she said, either riding or walking, 
almost every pleasant day, and were a pretty wild set of 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 133 

fellows ; but they never went by the way I was going. As 
I passed the last house, a man called out to know what I had 
to sell, for seeing my knapsack, he thought that I might be 
a pedler, who was takiag this unusual route over the ridge 
of the valley into South Adams. He told me that it was still 
four or five miles to the summit by the path which I had left, 
though not more than two in a straight line from where I was, 
but nobody ever went this way ; there was no path, and I 
should find it as steep as the roof of a house. But I knew 
that I was more used to woods and mountains than he, and 
went along through his cow-yard, while he, looking at the 
sun, shouted after me that I should not get to the top that 
night. I soon reached the head of the valley, but as I could 
not see the summit from this point, ascended a low mountain 
on the opposite side, and took its bearing with my compass. 
I at once entered the woods, and began to climb the steep 
side of the mountain in a diagonal direction, taking the bear- 
ing of a tree every dozen rods. The ascent was by no means 
difficult or unpleasant, and occupied much less time than it 
would have taken to follow the path. Even country people, 
I have observed, magnify the difficulty of travelling in the 
forest, and especially among the mountains. They seem 
to lack their usual common sense in this. I have climbed 
several higher moimtains without guide or path, and have 
found, as might be expected, that it takes only more time 
and patience commonly than to travel the smoothest high- 
way. It is very rare that you meet with obstacles in this 
world, which the himiblest man has not faculties to sur- 
mount. It is true, we may come to a perpendicular preci- 
pice, but we need not jump off, nor run our heads against 
it. A man may jump down his own cellar stairs, or dash his 
brains out against his chimney, if he is mad. So far as my 
experience goes, travellers generally exaggerate the difficulties 
of the way. '? Like most evils, the difficulty is imaginary ; 
for what's the hurry? If a person lost would conclude that 
after all he is not lost, he is not beside himself, but standing 
in his own old shoes on the very spot where he is, and that 
for the time being he will live there ; but the places that 
have known him, they are lost, — how much anxiety and 
danger would vanish. I am not alone if I stand by myself. 
Who knows where in space this globe is rolling? Yet we 
will not give ourselves up for lost, let it go where it will. 



134 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

I made my way steadily upward in a straight line through 
a dense undergrowth of mountain laurel, until the trees began 
to have a scraggy and infernal look, as if contending with 
frost goblins, and at length I reached the summit, just as 
the sun was setting. Several acres here had been cleared, 
and were covered with rocks and stumps, and there was 
a rude observatory in the middle which overlooked the woods. 
I had one fair view of the country before the sun went down, 
but I was too thirsty to waste any light in viewing the pros- 
pect, and set out directly to find water. First, going down 
a well-beaten path for half a mile through the low scrubby 
wood, till I came to where the water stood in the tracks of 
the horses which had carried travellers up, I lay down flat, 
and drank these dry one after another, a pure, cold, spring- 
like water, but yet I could not fill my dipper, though I con- 
trived little syphons of grass stems and ingenious aqueducts 
on a small scale ; it was too slow a process. Then remember- 
ing that I had passed a moist place near the top on my way 
up, I returned to find it again, and here with sharp stones 
and my hands, in the twilight, I made a well about two feet 
deep, which was soon filled with pure cold water, and the 
birds too came and drank at it. So I filled my dipper, and 
making my way back to the observatory, collected some 
dry sticks and made a fire on some flat stones, which had 
been placed on the floor for that purpose, and so I soon cooked 
my supper of rice, having already whittled a wooden spoon 
to eat it with. 

I sat up during the evening, reading by the light of the fire 
the scraps of newspapers in which some party had wrapped 
their luncheon ; the prices current in New York and Boston, 
the advertisements, and the singular editorials which some 
had seen fit to publish, not foreseeing under what critical 
circumstances they would be read. I read these things at 
a vast advantage there, and it seemed to me that the adver- 
tisements, or what is called the business part of a paper, were 
greatly the best, the most useful, natural, and respectable. 
Almost all the opinions and sentiments expressed were so 
little considered, so shallow and flimsy, that I thought the 
very texture of the paper must be weaker in that part and 
tear the more easily. The advertisements and the prices 
current were more closely allied to nature, and were re- 
spectable in some measure as tide and meteorological tables 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 135 

are ; but the reading matter, which I remembered was most 
prized down below, unless it was some humble record of 
science, or an extract from some old classic, struck me as 
strangely whimsical and crude, and one-idea'd, like a school- 
boy's theme, such as youths write and after burn. The 
opinions were of that kind that are doomed to wear a different 
aspect to-morrow, like last year's fashions; as if mankind 
were very green indeed, and would be ashamed of themselves 
in a few years, when they had outgrown this verdant period. 
There was, moreover, a singular disposition to wit and humor, 
but rarely the slightest real success ; and the apparent success 
was a terrible satire on the attempt; as if the Evil Genius 
of man laughed the loudest at his best jokes. The adver- 
tisements, as I have said, such as were serious, and not of the 
modern quack kind, suggested pleasing and poetic thoughts ; 
for commerce is really as interesting as nature. The very 
names of the commodities were poetic, and as suggestive 
as if they had been inserted in a pleasing poem. — Lumber, 
Cotton, Sugar, Hides, Guano, and Log-wood. Some sober, 
private, and original thought would have been grateful to 
read here, and as much in harmony with the circumstances 
as if it had been written on a mountain top ; for it is of 
a fashion which never changes, and as respectable as hides 
and log-wood, or any natural product. What an inesti- 
mable companion such a scrap of paper would have been, 
containing some fruit of a mature life. What a relic ! What 
a recipe ! It seemed a divine invention, by which not mere 
shining coin, but shinmg and current thoughts, could be 
brought up and left there. 

As it was cold, I collected quite a pile of wood and lay 
down on a board against the side of the building, not having 
any blanket to cover me, with my head to the fire, that I 
might look after it, which is not the Indian rule. But as 
it grew colder towards midnight, I at length encased myself 
completely in boards, managing even to put a board on top 
of me, with a large stone on it, to keep it down, and so slept 
comfortably. I v/as reminded, it is true, of the Irish chil- 
dren, who inquired what their neighbors did who had no 
door to put over them in winter nights as they had ; but 
I am convinced that there was nothing very strange in the 
inquiry. Those who have never tried it can have no idea 
how far a door, which keeps the single blanket down, may 



136 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

go toward making one comfortable. We are constituted 
a good deal like chickens, which taken from the hen, and put 
in a basket of cotton in the chimney corner, will often peep 
till they die nevertheless, but if you put in a book, or any- 
thing heavy, which will press down the cotton, and feel like 
the hen, they go to sleep directly. My only companions 
were the mice, which came to pick up the crumbs that had 
been left in those scraps of paper ; still, as everywhere, 
pensioners on man, and not unwisely improving this ele- 
vated track for their habitation. They nibbled what was 
for them; I nibbled what was for me. Once or twice in 
the night, when I looked up, I saw a white cloud drifting 
through the windows, and filling the whole upper story. 

This observatory was a building of considerable size 
erected by the students of Williamstown College, whose 
buildings might be seen by daylight gleaming far down in 
the valley. It would really be no small advantage if every 
college w^ere thus located at the base of a mountain, as good 
at least as one well-endowed professorship. It were as well 
to be educated in the shadow of a mountain as in more 
classical shades. Some will remember, no doubt, not only 
that they went to the college, but that they went to the 
mountain. Every visit to its summit would, as it were, 
generalize the particular information gained below, and sub- 
ject it to more catholic tests. 

I was up early and perched upon the top of this tow^er to 
see the daybreak, for some time reading the names that had 
been engraved there before I could distinguish more distant 
objects. An "untamable fly" buzzed at my elbow with the 
same nonchalance as on a molasses hogshead at the end of 
Long Wharf. Even there I must attend to his stale hum- 
drum. But now I come to the pith of this long digression. — 
As the light increased I discovered around me an ocean of 
mist, which reached up by chance exactly to the base of the 
tower, and shut out every vestige of the earth, while I was 
left floating on this fragment of the wreck of a world, on my 
carved plank in cloudland; a situation which required no 
aid from the imagination to render it impressive. As the 
light in the east steadily increased, it revealed to me more 
clearly the new world into which I had risen in the night, 
the new terra-firma perchance of my future life. There was 
not a crevice left through which the trivial places we name 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 137 

Massachusetts, or Vermont, or New York, could be seen, 
while I still inhaled the clear atmosphere of a July morning 
— if it were July there. All around beneath me was spread 
for a hundred miles on every side, as far as the eye could 
reach, an undulating country of clouds, answering in the 
varied swell of its surface to the terrestrial world it veiled. 
It was such a country as we might see in dreams, with all 
the delights of paradise. There were immense snowy pas- 
tures apparently smooth-shaven and firm, and shady vales 
between the vaporous mountains, and far in the horizon I 
could see where some luxurious misty timber jutted into 
the prairie, and trace the windings of a water course, some 
unimagined Amazon or Orinoko, by the misty trees on its 
brink. As there was wanting the symbol, so there was not 
the substance of impurity, no spot nor stain. It was a favor 
for which to be forever silent to be shown this vision. The 
earth beneath had become such a flitting thing of lights and 
shadows as the clouds had been before. It was not merely 
veiled to me, but it had passed away like the phantom of a 
shadow, (TKta? ovap, and this new platform was gained. As 
I had climbed above storm and cloud, so by successive days' 
journeys I might reach the region of eternal day beyond the 
tapering shadow of the earth ; aye, 

''Heaven itself shall slide 
And roll away, like melting stars that glide 
Along their oily threads." 

But when its own sun began to rise on this pure world, I 
found myself a dweller in the dazzling halls of Aurora, into 
which poets have had but a partial glance over the eastern 
hills, — drifting amid the saffron-colored clouds, and playing 
with the rosy fingers of the Dawn, in the very path of the 
Sun's chariot, and sprinkled with its dewy dust, enjoying 
the benignant smile, and near at hand the far-darting glances 
of the god. The inhabitants of earth behold commonly but 
the dark and shadowy under-side of heaven's pavement; 
it is only when seen at a favorable angle in the horizon 
morning or evening, that some faint streaks of the rich lining 
of the clouds are revealed. But my muse would fail to con- 
vey an impression of the gorgeous tapestry by which I was 
surrounded, such as men see faintly reflected afar off in the 
chambers of the east. Here, as on earth, I saw the gracious god 



138 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

" Flatter the mountain tops with sovereign eye, .... 
Gilding pale streams with heavenly alchemy." 

But never here did " Heaven's sun " stain himself. 
But alas, owing as I think to some un worthiness in myself, 
my private sun did stain himself, and 

"Anon permit the basest clouds to ride 
With ugly wrack on his celestial face," — 

for before the god had reached the zenith the heavenly pave- 
ment rose and embraced my wavering virtue, or rather I 
sank down again into that "forlorn world," from which the 
celestial Sun had hid his visage. — 

"How may a worm, that crawls along the dust. 
Clamber the azure mountains, thrown so high, 
And fetch from thence thy fair idea just, 
That in those sunny courts doth hidden lie, 
Cloth'd with such light, as blinds the angel's eye? 
How may weak mortal ever hope to file 
His unsmooth tongue, and his deprostrate style ? 
O, raise thou from his corse thy now entombed exile !" 

In the preceding evening I had seen the summits of new 
and yet higher mountains, the Catskills, by which I might 
hope to climb to heaven again, and had set my compass for a 
fair lake in the south-west, which lay in my way, for which 
I now steered, descending the mountain by my own route, 
on the side opposite to that by which I had ascended, and 
soon found myself in the region of cloud and drizzling rain, 
and the inhabitants affirmed that it had been a cloudy and 
drizzling day wholly. 

But now we must make haste back before the fog disperses 
to the blithe Merrimack water. — 

Since that first "away! away!" 

Many a lengthy reach we've rowed, 

Still the sparrow on the spray 

Hastes to usher in the day 

With her simple stanza'd ode. 

We passed a canal boat before sunrise, groping its way to 
the seaboard, and though we could not see it on account of 
the fog, the few dull, thumping, stertorous sounds which we 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 139 

heard, impressed us with a sense of weight and irresistible 
motion. One Uttle rill of commerce already awake on this 
distant New Hampshire river. The fog, as it required more 
skill in the steering, enhanced the interest of our early voyage, 
and made the river seem indefinitely broad. A slight mist, 
through which objects are faintly visible, has the effect of 
expanding even ordinary streams, by a singular mirage, into 
arms of the sea or inland lakes. In the present instance it 
was even fragrant and invigorating, and we enjoyed it as a 
sort of earlier sunshine, or dewy and embryo light. 

Low-anchored cloud, 

Newfoundland air. 

Fountain-head and source of rivers. 

Dew cloth, dream drapery. 

And napkin spread by fays ; 

Drifting meadow of the air. 

Where bloom the daisied banks and violets, 

And in whose fenny labyrinth 

The bittern booms and heron wades ; 

Spirit of lakes and seas and rivers, 

Bear only perfumes and the scent 

Of heahng herbs to just men's fields. 

The same pleasant and observant historian whom we 
quoted above says, that "In the mountainous parts of the 
country, the ascent of vapors, and their formation into clouds, 
is a curious and entertaining object. The vapors are seen 
rising in small columns like smoke from many chimneys. 
When risen to a certain height, they spread, meet, condense, 
and are attracted to the mountains, where they either distil 
in gentle dews, and replenish the springs, or descend in 
showers, accompanied with thunder. After short inter- 
missions, the process is repeated many times in the course 
of a summer day, affording to travellers a lively illustration 
of what is observed in the book of Job, 'They are wet with 
the showers of the mountains.'" 

Fogs and clouds which conceal the overshadowing moun- 
tains lend the breath of the plains to mountain vales. Even 
a small featured country acquires some grandeur in stormy 
weather, when clouds are seen drifting between the beholder 
and the neighboring hills. When in travelling toward 
Haverhill through Hampstead in this State, on the height of 
land between the Merrimack and the Piscataqua or the sea, 



140 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

you commence the descent eastward, the view toward the 
coast is so distant and miexpected, though the sea is in- 
visible, that you at first suppose the unobstructed atmosphere 
to be a fog in the lowlands concealing hills of corresponding 
elevation to that you are upon ; but it is the mist of prejudice 
alone, which the winds will not disperse. The most stu- 
pendous scenery ceases to be sublime when it becomes distinct, 
or in other words limited, and the imagination is no longer 
encouraged to exaggerate it. The actual height and breadth 
of a mountain or a water-fall are always ridiculously small ; 
they are the imagined only that content us. Nature is not 
made after such a fashion as we would have her. We piously 
exaggerate her wonders as the scenery around our home. 

Such was the heaviness of the dews along this river, that 
we were generally obliged to leave our tent spread over the 
bows of the boat till the sun had dried it, to avoid mildew. 
We passed the mouth of Penichook Brook, a wild salmon 
stream, in the fog without seeing it. At length the sun's 
rays struggled through the mist and showed us the pines 
on shore dripping with dew, and springs trickling from the 
moist banks, — 

''And now the taller sons, whom Titan warms, 
Of unshorn mountains blown with easy winds, 
Dandle the morning's childhood in their arms, 
And if they chanced to slip the prouder pines 
The under corylets did catch their shines, 
To gild their leaves." 

We rowed for some hours between glistening banks before 
the sun had dried the grass and leaves, or the day had estab- 
lished its character. Its serenity at last seemed the more 
profound and secure for the denseness of the morning's fog. 
The river became swifter, and the scenery more pleasing 
than before. The banks were steep and clayey for the most 
part, and trickling with water, and where a spring oozed 
out a few feet above the river, the boatmen had cut a trough 
out of a slab with their axes, and placed it so as to receive the 
water and fill their jugs conveniently. Sometimes this purer 
and cooler water, bursting out from under a pine or a rock, 
was collected into a basin close to the edge of, and level with 
the river, a fountain-head of the Merrimack. So near along 
life's stream are the fountains of innocence and youth making 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 141 

fertile its sandy margin; and the voyageur will do well to 
replenish his vessels often at these uncontaminated sources. 
Some youthful spring, perchance, still empties with tinkling 
music into the oldest river, even when it is falling into the 
sea, and we imagine that its music is distinguished by the 
river gods from the general lapse of the stream, and falls 
sweeter on their ears in proportion as it is nearer to the ocean. 
As the evaporations of the river feed thus these unsuspected 
springs which filter through its banks, so, perchance, our 
aspirations fall back again in springs on the margin of lifers 
stream to refresh and purify it. The yellow and tepid river 
may float his scow, and cheer his eye with its reflections and 
its ripples, but the boatman quenches his thirst at this small 
rill alone. It is this purer and cooler element that chiefly 
sustains his Hfe. The race will long survive that is thus 
discreet. 

Our course this morning lay between the territories of 
Merrimack, on the west, and Litchfield, once called Brenton's 
Farm, on the east, which townships were anciently the 
Indian Naticock. Brenton was a fur trader among the 
Indians, and these lands were granted to him in 1656. The 
latter township contains about five hundred inhabitants, of 
whom, however, we saw none, and but few of their dwell- 
ings. Being on the river, whose banks are always high and 
generally conceal the few houses, the country appeared much 
more wild and primitive than to the traveller on the neigh- 
boring roads. The river is by far the most attractive high- 
way, and those boatmen who have spent twenty or twenty- 
five years on it, must have had a much fairer, more wild 
and memorable experience than the dusty and jarring one 
of the teamster, who has driven, during the same time, on 
the roads which run parallel with the stream. As one as- 
cends the Merrimack, he rarely sees a village, but for the 
most part, alternate wood and pasture lands, and sometimes 
a field of corn or potatoes, of rye or oats or English grass, with 
a few straggling apple trees, and, at still longer intervals, a 
farmer's house. The soil, excepting the best of the interval, 
is commonly as light and sandy as a patriot could desire. 
Sometimes, this forenoon, the country appeared in its primi- 
tive state, and as if the Indian still inhabited it ; and again, 
as if many free new settlers occupied it, their slight fences 
straggling down to the water's edge, and the barking of dogs, 



142 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

and even the prattle of children, were heard, and smoke 
was seen to go up from some hearthstone, and the banks were 
divided into patches of pasture, mowing, tillage, and wood- 
land. But when the river spread out broader, with an unin- 
habited islet, or a long low sandy shore which ran on single 
and devious, not answering to its opposite, but far off as if it 
were seashore or single coast, and the land no longer nursed 
the river in its bosom, but they conversed as equals, the 
rustling leaves with rippling waves, and few fences were seen, 
but high oak woods on one side, and large herds of cattle, 
and all tracks seemed to point to one centre, behind some 
statelier grove, — we imagined that the river flowed through 
an extensive manor, and that the few inhabitants were re- 
tainers to a lord, and a feudal state of things prevailed. 

When there was a suitable reach, we caught sight of the 
Goffstown Mountain, the Indian Uncannunuc, rising before 
us on the west side. It was a calm and beautiful day, with 
only a slight zephyr to ripple the surface of the water, and 
rustle the woods on shore, and just warmth enough to prove 
the kindly disposition of Nature to her children. With 
buoyant spirits and vigorous impulses we tossed our boat 
rapidly along into the very middle of this forenoon. The 
fish-hawk sailed and screamed overhead. The chipping, 
or striped squirrel, sciurus striatus, sat upon the end of some 
Virginia fence or rider reaching over the stream, twirling a 
green nut with one paw, as in a lathe, while the other held it 
fast against its incisors as chisels. Like an independent 
russet leaf, with a will of its own, rustling whither it could ; 
now under the fence, now over it, now peeping at the voy- 
ageurs through a crack with only its tail visible, now at its 
lunch deep in the toothsome kernel, and now a rod off playing 
at hide-and-seek, with the nut stowed away in its chops, where 
were half a dozen more beside, extending its cheeks to a 
ludicrous breadth. As if it were devising through what safe 
valve of frisk or somerset to let its superfluous life escape; 
the stream passing harmlessly off, even while it sits, in 
constant electric flashes through its tail; and now with a 
chu elding squeak it dives into the root of a hazel, and we 
see no more of it. Or the larger red squirrel or chickaree, 
sometimes called the Hudson Bay squirrel, strmrus Hud- 
sonius, gave warning of our approach by that peculiar alarum 
of his, Uke the winding up of some strong clock, in the top 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 143 

of a pine tree, and dodged behind its stem, or leaped from 
tree to tree, with such caution and adroitness as if much 
depended on the fidelity of his scout, running along the white 
pine boughs sometimes twenty rods by our side, with such 
speed, and by such unerring routes as if it were some well- 
worn familiar path to him ; and presently, when we have 
passed, he returns to his work of cutting off the pine cones, 
and letting them fall to the ground. 

We passed CromwelFs Falls, the first we met with on this 
river, this forenoon, by means of locks, without using our 
wheels. These falls are the Nesenkeag of the Indians. 
Great Nesenkeag Stream comes in on the right just above, 
and Little Nesenkeag some distance below, both in Litch- 
field. We read in the gazetteer, under the head of Merrimack, 
that "The first house in this town was erected on the margin 
of the river [soon after 1665] for a house of traffic with the 
Indians. For some time one Cromwell carried on a lucrative 
trade with them, weighing their furs with his foot, till, en- 
raged at his supposed or real deception, they formed the 
resolution to murder him. This intention being communi- 
cated to Cromwell, he buried his wealth and made his escape. 
Within a few hours after his flight, a party of the Penacock 
tribe arrived, and not finding the object of their resentment, 
burnt his habitation." Upon the top of the high bank here, 
close to the river, was still to be seen his cellar, now over- 
grown with trees. It was a convenient spot for such a traffic, 
at the foot of the first falls above the settlements, and com- 
manding a pleasant view up the river, where he could see the 
Indians coming down with their furs. The lock-man told 
us that his shovel and tongs had been plowed up here, and 
also a stone with his name on it. But we will not vouch for 
the truth of this story. These were the traces of the white 
trader. On the opposite bank, where it jutted over the stream 
cape-wise, we picked up four arrow-heads and a small Indian 
tool made of stone, as soon as we had climbed it, where 
plainly there had once stood a wigwam of the Indians with 
whom Cromwell traded, and who fished and hunted here 
before he came. 

As usual the gossips have not been silent respecting Crom- 
well's buried wealth, and it is said that some years ago a 
farmer's plow, not far from here, slid over a flat stone which 
emitted a hollow sound, and on its being raised a sum of 



144 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

money was found. The lock-man told us another similar 
story about a farmer in a neighboring town, who had been a 
poor man, but who suddenly bought a good farm, and was 
well to do in the world; and, when he was questioned, did 
not give a satisfactory account of the matter ; — how few 
alas, could! This caused his hired man to remember, that 
one day as they were plowing together the plow struck some- 
thing, and his employer going back to look, concluded not 
to go round again, saying that the sky looked rather louring, 
and so put up his team. The like urgency has caused many 
things to be remembered which never transpired. The truth 
is, there is money buried everywhere, and you have only to 
go to work to find it. 

Not far from these falls stands an oak tree on the interval, 
about a quarter of a mile from the river, on the farm of a Mr. 
Lund, which was pointed out to us as the spot where French, 
the leader of the party which went in pursuit of the Indians 
from Dunstable, was killed. Farwell dodged them in the 
thick woods near. It did not look as if men had ever had to 
run for their lives on this now open and peaceful interval. 

Here too was another extensive desert by the side of the 
road in Litchfield, visible from the bank of the river. The 
sand was blown off in some places to the depth of ten or 
twelve feet, leaving small grotesque hillocks of that height 
where there was a clump of bushes firmly rooted. Thirty 
or forty years ago, as we were told, it was a sheep pasture, 
but the sheep being worried by the fleas, began to paw the 
ground, till they broke the sod, and so the sand began to 
blow, till now it had extended over forty or fifty acres. This 
evil might easily have been remedied at first, by spreading 
birches with their leaves on over the sand, and fastening 
them down with stakes, to break the wind. The flies bit 
the sheep, and the sheep bit the ground, and the sore had 
spread to this extent. It is astonishing what a great sore a 
little scratch breedeth. Who knows but Sahara, where 
caravans and cities are buried, began with the bite of an 
African flea. This poor globe, how it must itch in many 
places! Will no god be kind enough to spread a salve of 
birches over its sores ? — Here too we noticed where the 
Indians had gathered a hea*p of stones, perhaps for their 
council fire, which by their weight having prevented the 
sand under them from blowing away, were left on the sum- 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 145 

mit of a mound. They told us that arrow-heads, and also 
bullets of lead and iron, had been found here. We noticed 
several other sandj^ tracts in our voyage ; and the course of 
the Merrimack can be traced from the nearest mountain by 
its yellow sandbanks, though the river itself is for the most 
part invisible. Lawsuits, as we hear, have in some cases 
grown out of these causes. Railroads have been made through 
certain irritable districts, breaking their sod, and so have set 
the sand to blowing, till it has converted fertile farms into 
deserts, and the Company has had to pay the damages. 

This sand seemed to us the connecting hnl;: between land 
and water. It was a kind of water on which you could walk, 
and you could see the ripple marks on its surface, produced 
by the winds, precisely Hke those at the bottom of a bi'ook 
or lake. We had read that Mussulmans are permitted by 
the Koran to perform their ablutions in sand when they cannot 
get water, a necessary indulgence in Arabia, and we now 
understood the propriety of this provision. 

Plum Island, at the mouth of this river, to whose forma- 
tion, perhaps, these very banks have sent their contribution, 
is a similar desert of drifting sand, of various colors, blown 
into graceful curves by the wind. It is a mere sandbar 
exposed, stretching nine miles parallel to the coast, and, ex- 
clusive of the marsh on the inside, rarely more than half a 
mile wide. There are but half a dozen houses on it, and it 
is almost without a tree, or a sod, or any green thing with 
which a countryman is famihar. The thin vegetation stands 
half buried in sand, as in drifting snow. The only shrub, the 
beach plum, which gives the island its name, grows but a 
few feet high ; but this is so abundant that parties of a hun- 
dred at once come from the main land and down the Merri- 
mack in September, and pitch their tents, and gather the 
plums, which are good to eat raw and to preserve. The 
graceful and delicate beach pea too grows abundantly amid 
the sand ; and several strange moss-like and succulent plants. 
The island for its whole length is scolloped into low hills, not 
more than twenty feet high, by the wind, and excepting a 
faint trail on the edge of the marsh, is as trackless as Sahara. 
There are dreary bluffs of sand and valleys plowed by the 
wind, where you might expect to discover the bones of a 
caravan. Schooners come from Boston to load with the sand 



146 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

for masons' uses, and in a few hours the wind obliterates all 
traces of their work. Yet you have only to dig a foot or 
two anywhere to come to fresh water ; and you are surprised 
to learn that woodchucks abound here, and foxes are found, 
though you see not where they can burrow or hide them- 
selves. I have walked down the whole length of its broad 
beach at low tide, at which time alone you can find a firm 
ground to walk on, and probably Massachusetts does not 
furnish a more grand and dreary walk. On the sea side there 
are only a distant sail and a few coots to break the grand 
monotony. A soUtary stake stuck up, or a sharper sand-hill 
than usual, is remarkable as a land-mark for miles'; while 
for music you hear only the ceaseless sound of the surf, and 
the dreary peep of the beach birds. 

There were several canal boats at Cromwell's Falls, passing 
through the locks, for which we waited. In the forward part 
of one stood a brawny New Hampshire man, leaning on his 
pole, bareheaded and in shirt and trousers only, a rude 
Apollo of a man, coming down from that ''vast uplandish 
country" to the main; of nameless age, with flaxen hair, 
and vigorous, weather-bleached countenance, in whose 
wrinkles the sun still lodged, as Httle touched by the heats 
and frosts and withering cares of life, as a mountain maple ; 
an undressed, unkempt, uncivil man, with whom we parleyed 
a while, and parted not without a sincere interest in one 
another. His humanity was genuine and instinctive, and 
his rudeness only a manner. He inquired, just as we were 
passing out of earshot, if we had killed anything, and we 
shouted after him that we had shot a buoy, and could see him 
for a long while scratching his head in vain, to know if he 
had heard aright. 

There is reason in the distinction of civil and uncivil. 
The manners are sometimes so rough a rind, that we doubt 
whether they cover any core or sapwood at all. We some- 
times meet uncivil men, children of Amazons, who dwell 
by mountain paths, and are said to be inhospitable to 
strangers ; whose salutation is as rude as the grasp of their 
brawny hands, and who deal with men as unceremoniously 
as they are wont to deal with the elements. They need only 
to extend their clearings, and let in more sunhght, to seek 
out the southern slopes of the hills, from which they may 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 147 

look down on the civil plain or ocean, and temper their 
diet duly with the cereal fruits, consuming less wild meat 
and acorns, to become like the inhabitants of cities. A true 
pohteness does not result from any hasty and artificial 
poUshing, it is true, but grows naturally in characters of the 
right grain and quaUty, through a long fronting of men and 
events, and rubbing on good and bad fortune. Perhaps I 
can tell a tale to the purpose while the lock is filHng, — for 
our voyage this forenoon furnishes but few incidents of im- 
portance. 

Early one summer morning I had left the shores of the 
Connecticut, and for the Uvelong day travelled up the bank 
of a river, which came in from the west ; now looking down 
on the stream, foaming and rippHng through the forest a 
mile off, from the hills over which the road led, and now 
sitting on its rocky brink and dipping my feet in its rapids, 
or bathing adventurously in mid-channel. The hills grew 
more and more frequent, and gradually swelled into mountains 
as I advanced, hemming in the course of the river, so that at 
last I could not see where it came from, and was at Hberty 
to imagine the most wonderful meanderings and descents. 
At noon I slept on the grass in the shade of a maple, where 
the river had found a broader channel than usual, and was 
spread out shallow, with frequent sand-bars exposed. In 
the names of the towns I recognized some which I had long 
ago read on teamsters' wagons, that had come from far up 
country; quiet, uplandish towns, of mountainous fame. I 
walked along musing, and enchanted by rows of sugar-maples, 
through the small and uninquisitive villages, and sometimes 
was pleased with the sight of a boat drawn up on a sand-bar, 
where there appeared no inhabitants to use it. It seemed, 
however, as essential to the river as a fish, and to lend a 
certain dignity to it. It was like the trout of mountain 
streams to the fishes of the sea, or hke the young of the land 
crab born far in the interior, who have never yet heard the 
sound of the ocean's surf. The hills approached nearer and 
nearer to the stream, until at last they closed behind me, 
and I found myself, just before night-fall, in a romantic and 
retired valley, about half a mile in length, and barely wide 
enough for the stream at its bottom. I thought that there 
could be no finer site for a cottage among mountains. You 



148 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

could anywhere run across the stream on the rocks, and its 
constant murmuring would quiet the passions of mankind 
forever. Suddenly the road, which seemed aiming for the 
mountain side, turned short to the left, and another valley 
opened, concealing the former, and of the same character 
with it. It was the most remarkable and pleasing scenery 
I had ever seen. I found here a few mild and hospitable 
inhabitants, who, as the day was not quite spent, and I 
was anxious to improve the Ught, directed me four or five 
miles further on my way to the dwelling of a man whose 
name was Rice, who occupied the last and highest of the 
valleys that lay in my path, and who, they said, was a rather 
rude and uncivil man. But, "What is a foreign country to 
those who have science? Who is a stranger to those who 
have the habit of speaking kindly?" 

At length, as the sun was setting behind the mountains 
in a still darker and more solitary vale, I reached the dwelling 
of this man. Except for the narrowness of the plain, and 
that the stones were solid granite, it was the counterpart of 
that retreat to which Belphoebe bore the wounded Timias ; — 

"in a pleasant glade, 
With mountains round about environed, 
And mighty woods, which did the valley shade. 
And like a stately theatre it made. 
Spreading itself into a spacious plain ; 
And in the midst a little river played 
Amongst the pumy stones, which seemed to plain, 
With gentle murmur, that his course they did restrain." 

I observed, as I drew near, that he was not so rude as I 
had anticipated, for he kept many cattle, and dogs to watch 
them, and I saw where he had made maple sugar on the sides 
of the mountains, and above all distinguished the voices of 
children mingUng with the murmur of the torrent before the 
door. As I passed his stable I met one whom I supposed to 
be a hired man, attending to his cattle, and inquired if they 
entertained travellers at that house. "Sometimes we do," 
he answered, gruffly, and immediately went to the farthest 
stall from me, and I perceived that it was Rice himself whom 
I had addressed. But pardoning this incivility to the wild- 
ness of the scenery, I bent my steps to the house. There 
was no sign-post before it, nor any of the usual invitations 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 149 

to the traveller, though I saw by the road that many went 
and came there, but the owner's name only was fastened to 
the outside, a sort of implied and sullen invitation, as I 
thought. I passed from room to room without meeting any 
one, till I came to what seemed the guests' apartment, which 
was neat, and even had an air of refinement about it, and I 
was glad to find a map against the wall which would direct 
me on my journey on the morrow. At length I heard a step 
in a distant apartment, which was the first I had entered, 
and went to see if the landlord had come in ; but it proved 
to be only a child, one of those whose voices I had heard, 
probably his son, and between him and me stood in the door- 
way a large watch-dog, which growled at me, and looked as 
if he would presently spring, but the boy did not speak to 
him ; and when I asked for a glass of water, he briefly said, 
*'It runs in the corner." So I took a mug from the counter 
and went out of doors, and searched round the corner of the 
house, but could find neither well nor spring, nor any water 
but the stream which ran all along the front. I came back, 
therefore, and setting down the mug, asked the child if the 
stream was good to drink ; whereupon he seized the mug and 
going to the corner of the room, where a cool spring which 
issued from the mountain behind trickled through a pipe 
into the apartment, filled it, and drank and gave it to me 
empty again, and calhng to the dog, rushed out of doors. 
Ere long some of the hired men made their appearance, and 
drank at the spring, and lazily washed themselves and 
combed their hair in silence, and some sat down as if weary, 
and fell asleep in their seats. But all the while I saw no 
women, though I sometimes heard a bustle in that part of 
the house from which the spring came. 

At length Rice himself came in, for it was now dark, with 
an ox whip in his hand, breathing hard, and he too soon 
settled down into his seat not far from me, as if now that his 
day's work was done he had no further to travel, but only to 
digest his supper at his leisure. When I asked him if he 
could give me a bed, he said there was one ready, in such a 
tone as imphed that I ought to have known it, and the less 
said about that the better. So far so good. And yet he 
continued to look at me as if he would fain have me say some- 
thing further hke a traveller. I remarked, that it was a wild 
and rugged country he inhabited, and worth coming many 



150 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

miles to see. "Not so very rough neither," said he, and 
appealed to his men to bear witness to the breadth and 
smoothness of his fields, which consisted in all of one small 
interval, and to the size of his crops ; "and if we have some 
hills," added he, "there's no better pasturage anywhere." 
I then asked if this place was the one I had heard of, caUing 
it ^y a name I had seen on the map, or if it was a certain 
other ; and he answered, gruffly, that it was neither the one 
nor the other ; that he had settled it and cultivated it, and 
made it what it was, and I could know nothing about it. 
Observing some guns and other implements of hunting hang- 
ing on brackets around the room, and his hounds now sleep- 
ing on the floor, I took occasion to change the discourse, and 
inquired if there was much game in that country, and he 
answered this question more graciously, having some glim- 
mering of my drift ; but when I inquired if there were any 
bears, he answered impatiently, that he was no more in 
danger of losing his sheep than his neighbors, he had tamed 
and civiUzed that region. After a pause, thinking oi my 
journey on the morrow, and the few hours of daylight in 
that hollow and mountainous coimtry which would require 
me to be on my way betimes, I remarked that the day must 
be shorter by an hour there than on the neighboring plains ; 
at which he gruffly asked what I knew about it, and affirmed 
that he had as much dayhght as his neighbors ; he ventured 
to say the days were longer there than where I hved, as I 
should find if I stayed; that in some way, I could not be 
expected to understand how,''the sun came over the mountains 
half an hour earlier, and stayed half an hour later there than 
on the neighboring plains. — And more of like sort he said. 
He was, indeed, as rude as a fabled satyr. But I suffered 
him to pass for what he was, for why should I quarrel with 
nature? and was even pleased at the discovery of such a 
singular natural phenomenon. I dealt with him as if to me 
all manners were indifferent, and he had a sweet wild way 
with him. I would not question Nature, and I would rather 
have him as he was, than as I would have him. For I had 
come up here not for sympathy, or kindness, or society, 
but for novelty and adventure, and to see what Nature had 
produced here. I therefore did not repel his rudeness, but 
quite innocently welcomed it all, and knew how to appreciate 
it, as if I were reading in an old drama a part well sustained. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 151 

He was indeed a coarse and sensual man, and, as I have said, 
uncivil, but he had his just quarrel with nature and mankind, 
I have no doubt, only he had no artificial covering to his ill 
humors. He was earthy enough, but yet there was good soil 
in him, and even a long-suffering Saxon probity at bottom. 
If you could represent the case to him, he would not let the 
race die out in him, like a red Indian. 

At length I told him thai he was a fortunate man, and I 
trusted that he was grateful for so much hght, and rising, 
said I would take a lamp, and that I would pay him then for 
my lodging, for I expected to recommence my journey, even 
as early as the sun rose in his country ; but he answered in 
haste, and this time civilly, that I should not fail to find 
some of his household stirring, however early, for they were 
no sluggards, and I could take my breakfast with them before 
T started if I chose ; and as he Hghted the lamp I detected a 
gleam of true hospitality and ancient civility, a beam of pure 
and even gentle humanity from his bleared and moist eyes. 
It was a look more intimate with me, and more explanatory, 
than any words of his could have been if he had tried to his 
dying day. It was more significant than any Rice of those 
parts could even comprehend, and long anticipated this 
man's culture, — a glance of his pure genius, which did not 
much enhghten him, but did impress and rule him for the 
moment, and faintly constrain his voice and manner. He 
cheerfully led the way to my apartment, stepping over the 
limbs of his men who were asleep on the floor in an inter- 
vening chamber, and showed me a clean and comfortable 
bed. For many pleasant hours, after the household was 
asleep, I sat at the open window, for it was a sultry night, 
and heard the little river 

"Amongst the pumy stones, which seemed to plain, 
With gentle murmur, that his course they did restrain." 

But I arose as usual by starhght the next morning, before 
my host, or his men, or even his dogs, were awake ; and 
having left a ninepence on the counter, was already half 
way over the moimtain with the sun, before they had broken 
their fast. 

Before I had left the country of my host, while the first 
rays of the sun slanted over the mountains, as I stopped by 
the wayside to gather some raspberries, a very old man, not 



152 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

far from a hundred, came along with a milking pail in his 
hand, and turning aside began to pluck the berries near me ; — 

''his reverend locks 

In comelye curies did wave ; 
And on his aged temples grew 

The blossoms of the grave." 

But when I inquired the way, he answered in a low, rough 
voice, without looking up or seeming to regard my presence, 
which I imputed to his years ; and presently, muttering to 
himself, he proceeded to collect his cows in a neighboring 
pasture ; and when he had again returned near to the way- 
side, he suddenly stopped, while his cows went on before, 
and, uncovering his head, prayed aloud in the cool morning 
air, as if he had forgotten this exercise before, for his daily 
bread, and also that He who letteth his rain fall on the just 
and on the unjust, and without whom not a sparrow falleth 
to the ground, would not neglect the stranger (meaning me), 
and with even more direct and personal apphcations, though 
mainly according to the long estabhshed formula common 
to lowlanders and the inhabitants of mountains. When he 
had done praying, I made bold to ask him if he had any 
cheese in his hut which he would sell me, but he answered 
without looking up, and in the same low and repulsive voice 
as before, that they did not make any, and went to milking. 
It is written, ''The stranger who turneth away from a house 
with disappointed hopes, leaveth there his own offences, 
and departeth, taking with him all the good actions of the 
owner." 

Being now fairly in the stream of this week's commerce, 
we began to meet with boats more frequently, and hailed 
them from time to time with the freedom of sailors. The 
boatmen appeared to lead an easy and contented hfe, and 
we thought that we should prefer their employment ourselves 
to many professions which are much more sought after. 
They suggested how few circumstances are necessary to the 
well-being and serenity of man, how indiiferent all employ- 
ments are, and that any may seem noble and poetic to the 
eyes of men, if pursued with sufficient buoyancy and freedom. 
With Hberty and pleasant weather, the simplest occupation, 
any unquestioned country mode of Ufe which detains us in 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 153 

the open air, is alluring. The man who picks peas steadily 
for a living is more than respectable, he is even envied by 
his shop-worn neighbors. We are as happy as the birds when 
our Good Genius permits us to pursue any outdoor work 
without a sense of dissipation. Our pen-knife ghtters in the 
sun ; our voice is echoed by yonder wood ; if an oar drops, 
we are fain to let it drop again. 

The canal boat is of very simple construction, requiring 
but Httle ship timber, and, as we were told, costs about two 
hundred dollars. They are managed by two men. In 
ascending the stream they use poles fourteen or fifteen feet 
long, shod with iron, walking about one third the length of 
the boat from the forward end. Going down, they com- 
monly keep in the middle of the stream, using an oar at each 
end ; or if the wind is favorable they raise their broad sail, 
and have only to steer. They commonly carry down bricks 
or wood, — fifteen or sixteen thousand bricks, and as many 
cords of wood, at a time, — and bring back stores for the 
country, consuming two or three days each way between 
Concord and Charlestown. They sometimes pile the wood 
so as to leave a shelter in one part where they may retire 
from the rain. One can hardly imagine a more healthful 
employment, or one more favorable to contemplation and the 
observation of nature. Unlike the mariner, they have the 
constantly varying panorama of the shore to relieve the 
monotony of their labor, and it seemed to us that as they thus 
glided noiselessly from town to town, with all their furniture 
about them, for their very homestead is a movable, they could 
comment on the character of the inhabitants with greater 
advantage and security to themselves than the traveller in 
a coach, who would be unable to indulge in such broadsides 
of wit and humor in so small a vessel, for fear of the recoil. 
They are not subject to great exposure, like the Imnberers 
of Maine, in any weather, but inhale the healthfullest breezes, 
being slightly encumbered with clothing, frequently with 
the head and feet bare. When we met them at noon as they 
were leisurely descending the stream, their busy commerce 
did not look like toil, but rather like some ancient oriental 
game still played on a large scale, as the game of chess, for 
instance, handed down to this generation. From morning 
till night, unless the wind is so fair that his single sail will 
suffice without other labor than steering, the boatman walks 



154 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

backwards and forwards on the side of his boat, now stoop- 
ing with his shoulder to the pole, then drawing it back slowly 
to set it again, meanwhile moving steadily forward through 
an endless valley and an ever-changing scenery, now dis- 
tinguishing his course for a mile or two, and now shut in by 
a sudden turn of the river in a small woodland lake. All 
the phenomena which surround him are simple and grand, 
and there is something impressive, even majestic, in the very 
motion he causes, which will naturally be communicated to 
his own character, and he feels the slow irresistible movement 
under him with pride, as if it were his own energy. 

The news spread like wild fire among us youths, when 
formerly, once in a year or two, one of these boats came up 
the Concord River, and was seen stealing mysteriously 
through the meadows and past the village. It came and 
departed as silently as a cloud, without noise or dust, and 
was witnessed by few. One summer day this huge traveller 
might be seen moored at some meadow's wharf, and another 
summer day it was not there. Where precisely it came 
from, or who these men were who knew the rocks and sound- 
ings better than we who bathed there, we could never tell. 
We knew some river's bay only, but they took rivers from 
end to end. They were a sort of fabulous river-men to us. 
It was inconceivable by what sort of mediation any mere 
landsman could hold communication with them. Would 
they heave to to gratify his wishes ? No, it was favor enough 
to know faintly of their destination, or the time of their 
possible return. I have seen them in the summer, when the 
stream ran low, mowing the weeds in mid-channel, and with 
hayers' jests cutting broad swaths in three feet of water, 
that they might make a passage for their scow, while the 
grass in long windrows was c'arried down the stream, undried 
by the rarest hay weather. We used to admire unweariedly 
how their vessel would float, like a huge chip, sustaining so 
many casks of lime, and thousands of bricks, and such heaps 
of iron ore, with wheel-barrows aboard, — and that when 
we stepped on it, it did not yield to the pressure of our feet. 
It gave us confidence in the prevalence of the law of buoy- 
ancy, and we imagined to what infinite uses it might be put. 
The men appeared to lead a kind of life on it, and it was 
whispered that they slept aboard. Some affirmed that it 
carried sail, and that such winds blew here as filled the sails 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 155 

of vessels on the ocean ; which again others much doubted. 
They iiad been seen to sail across our Fair-Haven bay by 
lucky fishers who were out, but unfortunately others were not 
there to see. We might then say that our river was navi- 
gable, — why not ? In after years I read in print, with no 
little satisfaction, that it was thought by some that with a 
little expense in removing rocks and deepening the channel, 
"there might be a profitable inland navigation." I then 
lived somewhere to tell of. 

Such is Commerce, which shakes the cocoanut and bread- 
fruit tree in the remotest isle, and sooner or later dawns on 
the duskiest and most simple-minded savage. If we may be 
pardoned the digression, — who can help being affected at the 
thought of the very fine and slight, but positive relation, in 
which the savage inhabitants of some remote isle stand to 
the mj^sterious white mariner, the child of the sun ? — As 
if we were to have dealings with an animal higher in the scale 
of being than ourselves. It is a barely recognized fact to 
the natives that he exists, and has his home far away some- 
where, and is glad to buy their fresh fruits with his super- 
fluous commodities. Under the same catholic sun glances 
his white ship over Pacific waves into their smooth bays, 
and the poor savage's paddle gleams in the air. 

Man's little acts are grand, 
Beheld from land to land. 
There as they lie in time. 
Within their native clime. 

Ships with the noon-tide weigh, 

And glide before its ray. 

To some retired bay, 

Their haunt, 

Whence, under tropic sun. 

Again they run, 

Bearing gum Senegal and Tragicant. 
For this was ocean meant, 
For this the sun was sent. 
And moon was lent, 
And winds in distant caverns pent. 

Since our voyage the railroad on the bank has been ex- 
tended, and there is now but little boating on the Merrimack. 
All kinds of produce and stores were formerly conveyed by 
water, but now nothing is carried up the stream, and almost 



156 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

wood and bricks alone are carried down, and these are also 
carried on the railroad. The locks are fast wearing cut, and 
will soon be impassable, since the tolls will not pay the ex- 
pense of repairing them, and so in a few years ther3 will be 
an end of boating on this river. The boating, at present, 
is principally between Merrimack and Lowell, or Hooksett 
and Manchester. They make two or three trips from Mer- 
rimack to Lowell and back, about twenty-five miles each 
way, in a week, according to wind and weather. The boat- 
man comes singing in to shore late at night, and moors his 
empty boat, and gets his supper and lodging in some house 
near at hand, and again early in the morning, by starlight, 
perhaps, he pushes away up stream, and, by a shout, or the 
fragment of a song, gives notice of his approach to the lock- 
man, with whom he is to take his breakfast. If he gets up 
to his wood-pile before noon he proceeds to load his boat 
with the help of his single ''hand" and is on his way down 
again before night. When he gets to Lowell he unloads his 
boat, and gets his receipt for his cargo, and having heard 
the news at the public house at Middlesex or elsewhere, goes 
back with his empty boat and his receipt in his pocket to the 
owner, and to get a new load. We were frequently advertised 
of their approach by some faint sound behind us, and looking 
round saw them a mile off, creeping stealthily up the side of 
the stream like alligators. It was pleasant to hail these 
sailors of the Merrimack from time to time, and learn the 
news which circulated with them. We imagined that the 
sun shining on their bare heads had stamped a liberal and 
public character on their most private thoughts. 

The open and sunny interval still stretched away from the 
river, sometimes by two or more terraces, to the distant hill 
country, and when we climbed the bank we commonly found 
an irregular copse-wood skirting the river, the primitive 

having floated down stream long ago to , the "King's 

navy." Sometimes we saw the river road a quarter or half 
a mile distant, and the particolored Concord stage, with its 
cloud of dust, its van of earnest travelling faces, and its 
rear of dusty trunks, reminding us that the country had 
its places of rendezvous for restless Yankee men. There 
dwelt along at considerable distances on this interval a quiet 
agricultural and pastoral people, with every house its well, 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 157 

as we sometimes proved, and every household, though never 
so still and remote it appeared in the noontide, its dinner 
about these times. There they lived on, those New England 
people, farmer lives, father and grand-father and great- 
grandfather, on and on without noise, keeping up tradition, 
and expecting, beside fair weather and abundant harvests, 
we did not learn what. They were contented to live, since 
it was so contrived for them, and where their lines had fallen. — 

Our uninquiring corpses lie more low 
Than our life's curiosity doth go. 

Yet these men had no need to travel to be as wise as Solomon 
in all his glory, so similar are the lives of men in all countries, 
and fraught with the same homely experiences. One half 
the world knows how the other half lives. 

About noon we passed a small village in Merrimack at 
Thornton's Ferry, and tasted of the waters of Naticook 
Brook on the same side, where French and his companions, 
whose grave we saw in Dunstable, were ambuscaded by the 
Indians. The humble village of Litchfield, with its steeple- 
less meeting-house, stood on the opposite or east bank, near 
where a dense grove of willows backed by maples skirted the 
shore. There also we noticed some shagbark trees, which, 
as they do not grow in Concord, were as strange a sight to 
us as the palm would be, whose fruit only w^e have seen. Our 
course now curved gracefully to the north, leaving a low flat 
shore on the Merrimack side, which forms a sort of harbor 
for canal boats. We observed some fair elms and particularly 
large and handsome white-maples standing conspicuously on 
this interval, and the opposite shore, a quarter of a mile 
below, was covered with young elms and maples six inches 
high, which had probably sprung from the seeds which had 
been washed across. 

Some carpenters were at work here mending a scow on 
the green and sloping bank. The strokes of their mallets 
echoed from shore to shore, and up and down the river, and 
their tools gleamed in the sun a quarter of a mile from us, 
and we realized that boat-building was as ancient and honor- 
able an art as agriculture, and that there might be a naval 
as well as a pastoral life. The whole history of commerce 
was made manifest in that scow turned bottom upward on 
the shore. Thus did men begin to go down upon the sea 



158 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

in ships. We thought that it would be well for the traveller 
to build his boat on the bank of a stream, instead of finding 
a ferry or a bridge. In the Adventures of Henry the fur- 
trader, it is pleasant to read that when with his Indians he 
reached the shore of Ontario, they consumed two days in 
making two canoes of the bark of the elm tree, in which to 
transport themselves to Fort Niagara. It is a worthy in- 
cident in a journey, a delay as good as much rapid travelling. 
A good share of our interest in Xenophon's story of his re- 
treat is in the manoeuvres to get the army safely over the 
rivers, whether on rafts of logs or fagots, or on sheep-skins 
blown up. And where could they better afford to tarry mean- 
while than on the banks of a river? 

As we gUded past at a distance, these outdoor workmen 
appeared to have added some dignity to their labor by its 
very pubhcness. It was a part of the industry of nature, 
like the work of hornets and mud-wasps. — 

The waves slowly beat, 
Just to keep the noon sweet, 
And no sound is floated o'er. 
Save the mallet on shore, 
Which echoing on high, 
Seems a-caulking the sky. 

The haze, the sun's dust of travel, had a lethean influence 
on the land and its inhabitants, and all creatures resigned 
themselves to float upon the inappreciable tides of nature. 

Woof of the sun, ethereal gauze. 
Woven of Nature's richest stuffs, 
Visible heat, air-water, and dry sea, 
Last conquest of the eye ; 
Toil of the day displayed, sun-dust. 
Aerial surf upon the shores of earth. 
Ethereal estuary, frith of hght, 
Breakers of air, billows of heat, 
Fine summer spray on inland seas ; 
Bird of the sun, transparent-winged. 
Owlet of noon, soft-pinioned, 
From heath or stubble rising without song ; 
Establish thy serenity o'er the fields. 

The routine which is in the sunshine and the finest days, 
as that which has conquered and prevailed, commends itself 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 159 

to us by its very antiquity and apparent solidity and neces- 
sity. Our weakness needs it, and our strength uses it. We 
cannot draw on our boots without bracing ourselves against 
it. If there were but one erect and sohd standing tree in the 
woods, all creatures would go to rub against it and make 
sure of their footing. During the many hours which we 
spend in this waking sleep, the hand stands still on the face 
of the clock, and we grow like corn in the night. Men are 
as busy as the brooks or bees, and postpone everything 
to their busyness; as carpenters discuss pohtics between 
the strokes of the hammer while they are shingUng a roof. 

This noontide was a fit occasion to make some pleasant 
harbor, and there read the journal of some voyageur like 
ourselves, not too moral nor inquisitive, and which would 
not disturb the noon ; or else some old classic, the very flower 
of all reading, which we had postponed to such a season 

"Of Syrian peace, immortal leisure." 

But, alas, our chest, like the cabin of a coaster, contained 
only its well-thumbed Navigator for all hterature, and we 
were obHged to draw on our memory for these things. We 
naturally remembered Alexander Henry's Adventures here 
as a sort of classic among books of American travel. It 
contains scenery and rough sketcliing of men and incidents 
enough to inspire poets for many years, and to my fancy 
is as full of sounding names as any page of history, — Lake 
Winnipeg, Hudson's Bay, Ottaway, and portages innumer- 
able ; Ctappeways, Gens de Terres, Les Pilleurs, The Weepers ; 
with reminiscences of Hearne's journey, and the hke; an 
immense and shaggy but sincere country summer and winter, 
adorned with chains of lakes and rivers, covered with snows, 
with hemlocks and fir trees. There is a naturalness, an un- 
pretending and cold life in this traveller, as in a Canadian 
winter, what fife was preserved tlirough low temperatures 
and frontier dangers by furs within a stout heart. He has 
truth and moderation worthy of the father of history, which 
belong only to an intimate experience, and he does not defer 
too much to hterature. The unlearned traveller may quote 
his single fine from the poets with as good right as the scholar. 
He too may speak of the stars, for he sees them shoot per- 
haps when the astronomer does not. The good sense of 



160 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

this author is very conspicuous. He is a traveller who does 
not exaggerate, but writes for the information of his readers, 
for science and for history. His story is told with as much 
good faith and directness as if it were a report to his brother 
traders, or the Directors of the Hudson Bay Company, and 
is fitly dedicated to Sir Joseph Banks. It reads like the ar- 
gument to a great poem on the primitive state of the country 
and its inhabitants, and the reader imagines what in each 
case with the invocation of the Muse might be sung, and 
leaves off with suspended interest, as if the full account were 
to follow. In what school was this fur-trader educated? 
He seems to travel the immense snowy country with such 
purpose onl}' as the reader who accompanies him, and to the 
latter's imagination, it is, as it were, momentarily created 
to be the scene of his adventures. Wliat is most interesting 
and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the his- 
tory of Pontiac, of Braddock, or the North West, which it 
furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural 
facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When 
out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed 
its dates like withered leaves. 

The Souhegan, or Crooked river, as some translate it, comes 
in from the west about a mile and a half above Thornton's 
Ferry. Babboosuck Brook empties into it near its mouth. 
There are said to be some of the finest water privileges in 
the country still unimproved on the former stream, at a short 
distance from the Merrimack. One spring morning, March 
22, in the year 1677, an incident occurred on the banks of 
the river here, which is interesting to us as a shght memorial 
of an interview between two ancient tribes of men, one of 
which is now extinct, while the other, though it is still repre- 
sented by a miserable remnant, has long since disappeared 
from its ancient hunting grounds. A Mr. James Parker at 
"Mr. Hinchmanne's farme ner Meremack," wrote thus "to 
the Honred Governer and Council at Bostown, Hast, Post 
Hast." 

"Sagamore Wanalancet come this morning to informe 
me, and then went to Mr. Tyng's to informe him, that his 
son being on ye other sid of Meremack river over against 
Souhegan upon the 22 day of this instant, about tene of 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 161 

the clock in the morning, he discovered 15 Indian? on this 
sid the river, which he soposed to be Mohokes by ther spech. 
He called to them ; they answered, but he could not under- 
stand ther spech ; and he having a conow ther in the river, 
he went to breck his conow that they might not have ani 
ues of it. In the mean time they shot about thirty guns at 
him, and he being much frighted fled, and come home forth- 
with to Nashamcock, [Pawtucket Falls or Lowell] wher ther 
wigowames now stand." 

Penacooks and Mohawks! uhique gentium sunt? Where 
are they now? — In the year 1670, a Mohawk warrior scalped 
a Naamkeak or Wamesit Indian maiden near where Lowell 
now stands. She, however, recovered. Even as late as 1685, 
John Hogkins, a Penacook Indian, who describes his grand- 
father as having hved "at place called Malamake rever, 
other name chef Natukkog and Panukkog, that one rever 
great many names," wrote thus to the governor : — 

,,„ ,. , ''May 15th, 1685. 

Honor governor my friend, — 

"You my friend I desire your worship and your power, 
because I hope you can do som great matters this one. I am 
poor and naked and I have no men at my place because I 
afraid allwayes Mohogs he will kill me every day and night. 
If your worship when please pray help me you no let Mohogs 
kill me at my place at Malamake river called Pannukkog 
and Natukkog, I will submit your worship and your power. 
— And now I want pouder and such alminishon shatt and 
guns, because I have forth at my hom and 1 plant theare. 

"This all Indian hand, but pray you do consider your 
humble servant, John Hogkins." 

Signed also by Simon Detogkom, King Hary, Sam Linis, 
Mr. Jorge Rodunnonukgus, John Owamosimmin, and nine 
other Indians, with their marks against their names. 

But now, one hundred and fifty-four years having elapsed 
since the date of this letter, we went unalarmed on our way, 
without "brecking" our "conow," reading the New England 
Gazetteer, and seeing no traces of "Mohogs" on the banks. 

The Souhegan, though a rapid river, seemed to-day to have 
borrowed its character from the noon. 



162 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

Where gleaming fields of haze 
Meet the voyageur's gaze, 
And above, the heated air 
Seems to make a river there, 
The pines stand up with pride 
By the Souhegan's side, 
And the hemlock and the larch 
With their triumphal arch 
Are waving o'er its march 

To the sea. 
No wind stirs its waves, 
But the spirits of the braves 

Hov'ring o'er, 
Whose antiquated graves 
Its still water laves 

On the shore. 
With an Indian's stealthy tread 
It goes sleeping in its bed, 
Without joy or grief, 
Or the rustle of a leaf. 
Without a ripple or a billow, 
Or the sigh of a willow. 
From the Lyndeboro' hills 
To the Merrimack mills. 
With a louder din 
Did its current begin. 
When melted the snow 
On the far mountain's brow, 
And the drops came together 
In that rainy weather. 
Experienced river, 
Hast thou flowed forever? 
Souhegan soundeth old, 
But the half is not told, 
What names hast thou borne 
In the ages far gone. 
When the Xanthus and Meander 
Commenced to wander. 
Ere the black bear haunted 

Thy red forest-floor. 
Or Nature had planted 

The pines by thy shore. 

During the heat of the day, we rested on a large island a 
mile above the mouth of this river, pastured by a herd of 
cattle, with steep banks and scattered elms and oaks, and a 
sufficient channel for canal boats on each side. When we 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 163 

made a fire to boil some rice for our dinner, the flames spread- 
ing amid the dry grass, and the smoke curling silently upward 
and casting grotesque shadows on the ground seemed phenom- 
ena of the noon, and we fancied that we progressed up the 
stream without effort, and as naturally as the wind and tide 
went down, not outraging the calm days by unworthy bustle 
or impatience. The woods on the neighboring shore were 
alive with pigeons, which were moving south looking for 
mast, but now, hke ourselves, spending their noon in the 
shade. We could hear the shght wiry winnowing sound of 
their wings as they changed their roosts from time to time, 
and their gentle and tremulous cooing. They sojourned with 
us during the noontide, greater travellers far than we. You 
may frequently discover a single pair sitting upon the lower 
branches of the white pine in the depths of the wood, at this 
hour of the day, so silent and soUtary, and with such a hermit- 
like appearance, as if they had never strayed beyond its 
skirts, while the acorn which was gathered in the forests of 
Maine is still undigested in their crops. We obtained one 
of these handsome birds, which hngered too long upon its 
perch, and plucked and broiled it here with some other game, 
to be carried along for our supper ; for beside the provisions 
which we carried with us, we depended mainly on the river 
and forest for our supply. It is true, it did not seem to be 
putting this bird to its right use, to pluck off its feathers, and 
extract its entrails, and broil its carcass on the coals; but 
we heroically persevered, nevertheless, waiting for farther 
information. The same regard for Nature which excited 
our sympathy for her creatures, nerved our hands to carry 
through what we had begun. For we would be honorable 
to the party we deserted; we would fulfil fate, and so at 
length, perhaps, detect the secret innocence of these incessant 
tragedies which Heaven allows. — 

"Too quick resolves do resolution wrong, 
What, part so soon to be divorced so long? 
Things to be done are long to be debated ; 
Heaven is not day'd, Repentance is not dated." 

We are double-edged blades, and every time we whet our 
virtue the return stroke straps our vice. Where is the skilful 
swordsman who can give clean wounds, and not rip up his 
work with the other edge? 



164 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

Nature herself has not provided the most graceful end for 
her creatures. What becomes of all these birds that people 
the air and forest for our solacement? The sparrows seem 
always chipper, never infirm. We do not see their bodies 
lie about ; yet there is a tragedy at the end of each one of 
their lives. They must perish miserablj^; not one of them 
is translated. True, ''not a sparrow falleth to the ground 
without our Heavenly Father's knowledge," but they do 
fall, nevertheless. 

The carcasses of some poor squirrels, however, the same 
that frisked so merrily in the morning, which we had skinned 
and embowelled for our dinner, we abandoned in disgust, 
with tardy humanity, as too wretched a resource for any 
but starving men. It was to perpetuate the practice of a 
barbarous era. If they had been larger, our crime had been 
less. Their small red bodies, little bundles of red tissue, 
mere gobbets of venison, would not have ''fattened fire." 
With a sudden impulse we threw them away, and washed 
our hands, and boiled some rice for our dinner. "Behold the 
difference between the one who eateth flesh, and him to whom 
it belonged ! The first hath a momentary enjoyment, whilst 
the latter is deprived of existence!" — "Who could commit 
so great a crime against a poor animal, who is fed only by the 
herbs which grow wild in the woods, and whose belly is burnt 
up with hunger?" We remembered a picture of mankind 
in the hunter age, chasing hares down the mountains, me 
miserable ! Yet sheep and oxen are but larger squirrels, 
whose hides are saved and meat is salted, whose souls per- 
chance are not so large in proportion to their bodies. 

There should always be some flowering and maturing of 
the fruits of nature in the cooking process. Some simple 
dishes recommend themselves to our imaginations as well 
as palates. In parched corn, for instance, there is a mani- 
fest sympathy between the bursting seed and the most per- 
fect developments of vegetable life. It is a perfect flower 
with its petals, like the houstonia or anemone. On my warm 
hearth these cerealian blossoms expanded ; here is the bank 
whereon they grew. Perhaps some such visible blessing 
would always attend the simple and wholesome repast. 

Here was that "pleasant harbor" which we had sighed 
for, where the weary voyageur could read the journal of some 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 165 

other sailor, whose bark had plowed, perchance, more famous 
and classic seas. At the tables of the gods, after feasting 
follow music and song ; we will recline now under these island 
trees, and for our minstrel call on 

ANACREON 

" Nor has he ceased his charming song, but still that lyre. 
Though he is dead, sleeps not in Hades." 

Simonides' Epigram on Anacreon. 

I lately met with an old volume from a London bookshop, 
containing the Greek Minor Poets, and it was a pleasure to 
read once more only the words, — Orpheus, — Linus, — 
Musseus, — those faint poetic sounds and echoes of a name, 
dying away on the ears of us modern men ; and those hardly 
more substantial sounds, Mimnermus — Ibycus — Alcaeus 
— Stesichorus — Menander. They lived not in vain. We 
can converse with these bodiless fames without reserve or 
personality. 

I know of no studies so composing as those of the classical 
scholar. When we have sat down to them, life seems as still 
and serene as if it were very far off, and I believe it is not 
habitually seen from any common platform so truly and 
unexaggerated as in the light of literature. In serene hours 
we contemplate the tour of the Greek and Latin authors 
with more pleasure than the traveller does the fairest scenery 
of Greece or Italy. Where shall we find a more refined so- 
ciety? That highway down from Homer and Hesiod to Hor- 
ace and Juvenal is more attractive than the Appian. Reading 
the classics, or conversing with those old Greeks and Latins 
in their surviving works, is like walking amid the stars and 
constellations, a high and by way serene to travel. Indeed, 
the true scholar will be not a little of an astronomer in his 
habits. Distracting cares will not be allowed to obstruct 
the field of his vision, for the higher regions of literature, 
like astronomy, are above storm and darkness. 

But passing by these rumors of bards, let us pause for a 
moment at the Teian poet. 

There is something strangely modern about him. He is 
very easily turned into English. Is it that our lyric poets 
have resounded only that lyre, which would sound only light 



166 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

subjects, and which Simonides tells us does not sleep in Hades ? 
His odes are like gems of pure ivory. They possess an ethereal 
and evanescent beauty like summer evenings, o xpv ^^ ^^^^^ 
voov avdcL, which you must perceive with the flower of the 
mind, — and show how slight a beauty could be expressed. 
You have to consider them, as the stars of lesser magnitude, 
with the side of the eye, and look aside from them to behold 
them. They charm us by their serenity and freedom from 
exaggeration and passion, and by a certain flowerlike beauty, 
which does not propose itself, but must be approached and 
studied like a natural object. But perhaps their chief merit 
consists in the lightness and yet security of their tread ; 

"The young and tender stalk 
Ne'er bends when they do walk." 

True, our nerves are never strung by them ; — it is too 
constantly the sound of the lyre, and never the note of the 
trumpet ; but they are not gross, as has been presumed, but 
always elevated above the sensual. 

Perhaps these are the best that have come down to us. 

ON HIS LYRE 

I wish to sing the Atridae, 

And Cadmus I wish to sing ; 

But my lyre sounds 

Only love with its chords. 

Lately I changed the strings 

And all the lyre ; 

And I began to sing the labors 

Of Hercules ; but my lyre 

Resounded loves. 

Farewell, henceforth, for me, 

Heroes, for my lyre 

Sings only loves. 



TO A SWALLOW 

Thou indeed, dear swallow, 
Yearlj^ going and coming, 
In summer weavest thy nest. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 167 

And in winter go'st disappearing 
Either to Nile or to Memphis. 
But Love always weaveth 
His nest in my heart.*** 



ON A SILVER CUP 

Turning the silver, 

Vulcan, make for me. 

Not indeed a panoply, 

For what are battles to me? 

But a hollow cup. 

As deep as thou canst. 

And make for me in it 

Neither stars, nor wagons, 

Nor sad Orion ; 

What are the Pleiades to me? 

What the shining Bootes ? 

Make vines for me, 

And clusters of grapes in it. 

And of gold Love and Bathyllus 

Treading the grapes 

With the fair Lyseus. 



ON HIMSELF 

Thou sing'st the affairs of Thebes 

And he the battles of Troy, 

But I of my own defeats. 

No horse have wasted me. 

Nor foot, nor ships ; 

But a new and different host, 

From eyes smiting me. 



TO A DOVE 

Lovely dove, 

Whence, whence dost thou fly? 
Whence, running on air. 
Dost thou waft and diffuse 
So many sweet ointments ? 



168 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

Who art? What thy errand? — 

Anacreon sent me 

To a boy, to Bathyllus, 

Who lately is ruler and tyrant of all. 

Cythere has sold me 

For one little song, 

And I'm doing this service 

For Anacreon. 

And now, as you see, 

I bear letters from him. 

And he says that directly 

He'll make me free, 

But though he release me, 

His slave I will tarry with him. 

For why should I fly 

Over mountains and fields, 

And perch upon trees, 

Eating some wild thing? 

Now indeed I eat bread, 

Plucking it from the hands 

Of Anacreon himself ; 

And he gives me to drink 

The wine which he tastes, 

And drinking, I dance, 

And shadow my master's 

Face with my wings ; 

And, going to rest. 

On the lyre itself I sleep. 

That is all ; get thee gone. 

Thou hast made me more talkative, 

Man, than a crow. 



ON LOVE 

Love walking swiftly, 

With hyacinthine staff, 

Bade me to take a run with him ; 

And hastening through swift torrents, 

And woody places, and over precipices, 

A water-snake stung me. 

And my heart leaped up to 

My mouth, and I should have fainted ; 

But Love fanning my brows 

With his soft wings, said. 

Surely, thou art not able to love. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 169 



ON WOMEN 



Nature has given horns 

To bulls, and hoofs to horses, 

Swiftness to hares, 

To Hons yawning teeth, 

To fishes swimming, 

To birds flight. 

To men wisdom. 

For women she had nothing beside ; 

What then does she give ? Beauty, 

Instead of all shields. 

Instead of all spears ; 

And she conquers even iron 

And fire, who is beautiful. 



ON LOVERS 

Horses have the mark 

Of fire on their sides. 

And some have distinguished 

The Parthian men by their crests ; 

So I, seeing lovers. 

Know them at once, 

For they have a certain slight 

Brand on their hearts. 



TO A SWALLOW 

What dost thou wish me to do to thee ■ 

What, thou loquacious swallow? 

Dost thou wish me taking thee 

Thy light pinions to clip? 

Or rather to pluck out 

Thy tongue from within, 

As that Tereus did? ^ 

Why with thy notes in the dawn 

Hast thou plundered Bathyllus 

From my beautiful dreams? 



170 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 



TO A COLT 

Thracian colt, why at me 
Looking aslant with thy eyes, 
Dost thou cruelly flee, 
And think that I know nothing wise? 
Know I could well 
Put the bridle on thee, 
And holding the reins, turn 
Round the bounds of the course. 
But now thou browsest the meads, 
And gambolling lightly dost play, 
For thou hast no skillful horseman 
Mounted upon thy back. 



CUPID WOUNDED 

Love once among roses 

Saw not 

A sleeping bee, but was stung ; 

And being wounded in the finger 

Of his hand, cried for pain. 

Running as well as flying 

To the beautiful Venus, 

I am killed, mother, said he, 

I am killed, and I die. 

A little serpent has stung me, 

Winged, which they call 

A bee — the husbandmen. 

And she said, If the sting 

Of a bee afflicts you. 

How, think you, are they afflicted. 

Love, whom you smite? 

Late in the afternoon, for we had lingered long on the 
island, we raised our sail for the first time, and for a short 
hour the south-west wind was our ally ; but it did not please 
Heaven to abet us long. With one sail raised we swept 
slowly up the eastern side of the stream, steering clear of the 
rocks, while from the top of a hill which formed the opposite 
bank, some lumberers were rolling down timber to be rafted 
down the stream. We could see their axes and levers gleam- 



I 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 171 

ing in the sun, and the logs came down with a dust and a 
rumbhng sound, which was reverberated through the woods 
beyond us on our side, like the roar of artillery. But Zephyr 
soon took us out of sight and hearing of this commerce. 
Having passed Read's Ferry, and another island called Mc- 
Gaw's Island, we reached some rapids called Moore's Falls, 
and entered on "that section of the river, nine miles in extent, 
converted, by law, into the Union Canal, comprehending in 
that space six distinct falls ; at each of which, and at several 
intermediate places, work has been done." After passing 
Moore's Falls by means of locks, we again had recourse to 
our oars, and went merrily on our way, driving the small 
sand-piper from rock to rock before us, and sometimes row- 
ing near enough to a cottage on the bank, though they were 
few and far between, to see the sun-flowers, and the seed 
vessels of the poppy, like small goblets filled with the water 
of Lethe, before the door, but without disturbing the sluggish 
household behind. Thus we held on, sailing or dipping our 
way along with the paddle up this broad river, — smooth 
and placid, flowing over concealed rocks, where we could 
see the pickerel lying low in the transparent water, — eager 
to double some distant cape, to make some great bend as in 
the life of man, and see what new perspective would open ; 
looking far into a new country, broad and serene, the cottages 
of settlers seen afar for the first time, yet with the moss of 
a century on their roofs, and the third or fourth generation 
in their shadow. Strange was it to consider how the sun and 
the summer, the buds of spring and the seared leaves of 
autumn, were related to these cabins along the shore ; how 
all the rays which paint the landscape radiate from them, 
and the flight of the crow and the gyrations of the hawk have 
reference to their roofs. Still the ever rich and fertile shores 
accompanied us, fringed with vines and alive with small 
birds and frisking squirrels, the edge of some farmer's field 
or widow's wood-lot ; or wilder, perchance, where the musk- 
rat, the little medicine of the river, drags itself along stealthily 
over the alder leaves and mussel shells, and man and the 
memory of man are banished far. 

At length the unwearied, never sinking shore, still holding 
on without break, with its cool copses and serene pasture 
grounds, tempted us to disembark; and we adventurously 
landed on this remote coast, to survey it, unknown to any 



172 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

human inhabitant probably to this day. But we still remem- 
ber the gnarled and hospitable oaks which grew even there 
for our entertainment, and were no strangers to us, the lonely 
horse in his pasture, and the patient cows, whose path to 
the river, so judiciously chosen to overcome the difficulties 
of the way, we followed, and disturbed their ruminations in 
the shade; and, above all, the cool free aspect of the wild 
apple trees, generously proffering their fruit to us, though 
still green and crude, the hard, round, glossy fruit, which, if 
not ripe, still was not poison, but New Enghsh too, brought 
hither, its ancestors, by ours once. These gentler trees im- 
parted a half-civiUzed and twihght aspect to the otherwise 
barbarian land. Still further on we scrambled up the rocky 
channel of a brook, which had long served nature for a sluice 
there, leaping hke it from rock to rock through tangled woods, 
at the bottom of a ra\dne, which grew darker and darker, 
and more and more hoarse the murmurs of the stream, until 
we reached the ruins of a mill, where now the ivy grew, and 
the trout glanced through the crumbhng flume; and there 
we imagined what had been the dreams and speculations of 
some early settler. But the waning day compelled us to 
embark once more, and redeem this wasted time with long 
and vigorous sweeps over the ripphng stream. 

It was still wild and soHtary, except that at intervals of 
a mile or two the roof of a cottage might be seen over the 
bank. This region, as w^e read, was once famous for the 
manufacture of straw bonnets of the Leghorn kind, of which 
it claims the invention in these parts, and occasionally some 
industrious damsel tripped down to the water's edge, as it 
appeared, to put her straw a-soak, and stood awhile to watch 
the retreating voyageurs, and catch the fragment of a boat 
song which we had made wafted over the water. 

Thus, perchance, the Indian hunter. 

Many a lagging year agone, 
Gliding o'er thy rippling waters, 

Lowly hummed a natural song. 

Now the sun's behind the willows, 

Now he gleams along the waves, 
Faintly o'er the wearied billows 

Come the spirits of the braves. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 173 

Just before sundown we reached some more falls in the 
town of Bedford, where some stone-masons were employed 
repairing the locks in a solitary part of the river. They were 
interested in our adventures, especially one young man of 
our own age, who inquired at first if we were bound up to 
'' ' Skeag ; " and when he had heard our story, and examined our 
outfit, asked us other questions, but temperately still, and 
always turning to his work again, though as if it were become 
his duty. It was plain that he would like to go with us, and 
as he looked up the river, many a distant cape and wooded 
shore were reflected in his eye, as well as in his thoughts. 
When we were ready he left his work, and helped us through 
the locks with a sort of quiet enthusiasm, telling us we were 
at Coos Falls, and we could still distinguish the strokes of his 
chisel for many sweeps after we had left him. 

We wished to camp this night on a large rock in the middle 
of the stream, just above these falls, but the want of fuel, 
and the difficulty of fixing our tent firmly, prevented us ; so 
we made our bed on the main land opposite, on the west 
bank, in the town of Bedford, in a retired place, as we sup- 
posed, there being no house in sight. 

WEDNESDAY 

"Man is man's foe and destiny." 

— Cotton. 

Early this morning, as we were rolling up our buffaloes 
and loading our boat amid the dew, while our embers were 
still smoking, the masons who worked at the locks, and 
whom we had seen crossing the river in their boat the evening 
before while we were examining the rock, came upon us as 
they were going to their work, and we found that we had 
pitched our tent directly in their path to their boat. This 
was the only time that we were observed on our camping 
ground. Thus, far from the beaten highways and the dust 
and din of travel, we beheld the country privately, yet freely, 
and at our leisure. Other roads do some violence to Nature, 
and bring the traveller to stare at her, but the river steals 
into the scenery it traverses without intrusion, silently 
creating and adorning it, and is as free to come and go as the 
zephyr. 



174 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

As we shoved away from this rocky coast, before sunrise, 
the smaller bittern, the genius of the shore, was moping along 
its edge, or stood probing the mud for its food, with ever an 
eye on us, though so demurely at work, or else he ran along 
over the wet stones Uke a wrecker in his storm coat, looking 
out for wrecks of snails and cockles. Now away he goes, 
with a limping flight, uncertain where he will alight, until a 
rod of clear sand amid the alders invites his feet ; and now 
our steady approach compels him to seek a new retreat. 
It is a bird of the oldest Thalesian school, and no doubt be- 
Heves in the priority of water to the other elements ; the rehc 
of a twihght antediluvian age which j^et inhabits these 
bright American rivers with us Yankees. There is some- 
thing venerable in this melancholy and contemplative race 
of birds, which may have trodden the earth while it was yet 
in a sUmy and imperfect state. Perchance their tracks too 
are still visible on the stones. It still Hngers into our glaring 
summers, bravely supporting its fate without sympathy 
from man, as if it looked forward to some second advent of 
which he has no assurance. One wonders if, by its patient 
study by rocks and sandy capes, it has wrested the whole 
of her secret from Nature yet. What a rich experience it 
must have gained, standing on one leg and looking out from 
its dull eye so long on sunsliine and rain, moon and stars ! 
What could it tell of stagnant pools and reeds and dank night- 
fogs? It would be worth the while to look closely into the 
eye which has been open and seeing at such hours, and in 
such sohtudes, its dull, yellowish, greenish eye. Methinks 
my own soul must be a bright invisible green. I have seen 
these birds stand by the half dozen together in the shallower 
water along the shore, with their bills thrust into the mud at 
the bottom, probing for food, the whole head being concealed, 
while the neck and body formed an arch above the water. 

Cohass Brook, the outlet of Massabesic Pond, — which 
last is five or six miles distant, and contains fifteen hundred 
acres, being the largest body of fresh water in Rockingham 
county, — comes in near here from the east. Rowing be- 
tween Manchester and Bedford, we passed, at an early hour, 
a ferry and some falls, called Goff's Falls, the Indian Cohasset, 
where there is a small village, and a handsome green islet 
in the middle of the stream. From Bedford and Merrimack 
have been boated the bricks of which Lowell is made. About 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 175 

twenty years before, as they told us, one Moore, of Bedford, 
having clay on his farm, contracted to furnish eight milUons 
of bricks to the founders of that city within two years. He 
fulfilled his contract in one year, and since then bricks have 
been the principal export from these towns. The farmers 
found thus a market for their wood, and when they had 
brought a load to the kilns, they could cart a load of bricks 
to the shore, and so make a profitable day's work of it. Thus 
all parties were benefited. It was worth the while to see the 
place where Lowell was " dug out." So likewise Manchester is 
being built of bricks made still higher up the river at Hooksett. 

There might be seen here on the bank of the Merrimack, 
near Golf's Falls, in what is now the town of Bedford, famous 
*^for hops and for its fine domestic manufactures," some 
graves of the aborigines. The land still bears this scar here, 
and time is slowly cmmbling the bones of a race. Yet with- 
out fail every spring since they first fished and hunted here, 
the brown thrasher has heralded the morning from a birch 
or alder spray, and the undying race of reed-birds still rustles 
through the withering grass. But these bones rustle not. 
These mouldering elements are slowly preparing for another 
metamorphosis, to serve new masters, and what was the 
Indian's will ere long be the white man's sinew. 

We learned that Bedford was not so famous for hops as 
formerly, since the price is fluctuating, and poles are now 
scarce. Yet if the traveller goes back a few miles from the 
river, the hop kilns will still excite his curiosity. 

There were few incidents in our voyage this forenoon, 
though the river was now more rocky and the falls more 
frequent than before. It was a pleasant change, after rowing 
incessantly for many hours, to lock ourselves through in some 
retired place, — for commonly there was no lockman at 
hand, — one sitting in the boat, while the other, sometimes 
with no little labor and heave-yoing, opened and shut the 
gates, waiting patiently to see the locks fill. We did not 
once use the wheels which we had pro\'ided. Taking advan- 
tage of the eddy, we were sometimes floated up to the locks 
almost in the face of the falls; and, by the same cause, any 
floating timber was carried round in a circle and repeatedly 
drawn into the rapids before it finally went down the stream. 
These old gray structures, with their quiet arms stretched 
over the river in the sun, appeared like natural objects in 



176 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

the scenery, and the king-fisher and sand-piper alighted on 
them as readily as on stakes or rocks. 

We rowed leisurely up the stream for several hours, until 
the sun had got high in the sky, our thoughts monotonously 
beating time to our oars. For outward variety there was 
only the river and the receding shores, a vista continually 
opening behind and closing before us, as we sat with our 
backs up stream, and for inward such thoughts as the muses 
grudgingly lent us. We were always passing some low invit- 
ing shore or some overhanging bank, on which, however, we 
never landed. — 

Such near aspects had we 
Of our life's scenery. 

It might be seen by what tenure men held the earth. The 
smallest stream is mediterranean sea, a smaller ocean creek 
within the land, where men may steer by their farm bounds 
and cottage Ughts. For my own part, but for the geogra- 
phers, I should hardly have known how large a portion of 
our globe is water, my life has chiefly passed within so deep 
a cove. Yet I have sometimes ventured as far as to the 
mouth of my Snug Harbor. From an old ruined fort on 
Staten Island, I have loved to watch all day some vessel 
whose name I had read in the morning through the telegraph 
glass, when she first came upon the coast, and her hull heaved 
up and glistened in the sun, from the moment when the pilot 
and most adventurous news-boats met her, past the Hook, 
and up the narrow channel of the wide outer bay, till she was 
boarded by the health officer, and took her station at Qua- 
rantine, or held on her unquestioned course to the wharves 
of New York. It was interesting, too, to watch the less 
adventurous news-man, who made his assault as the vessel 
swept through the Narrows, defying plague and quarantine 
law, and fastening his little cock boat to her huge side, clam- 
bered up and disappeared in the cabin. And then I could 
imagine what momentous news was being imparted by the 
captain, which no American ear had ever heard, that Asia, 
Africa, Europe — were all sunk ; for which at length he pays 
the price, and is seen descending the ship's side with his bundle 
of newspapers, but not where he first got up, for these arrivers 
do not stand still to gossip, — and he hastes away with steady 
sweeps to dispose of his wares to the highest bidder, and we 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 177 

shall erelong read something startling, — "By the latest 

arrival," — "by the good ship ," — On Sunday I 

beheld from some interior hill the long procession of vessels 
getting to sea, reaching from the city wharves through the 
Narrows, and past the Hook, quite to the ocean-stream, far 
as the eye could reach, with stately march and silken sails, 
all counting on lucky voyages, but each time some of the 
number, no doubt, destined to go to Davy's locker, and never 
come on this coast again. — And again, in the evening of a 
pleasant day, it was my amusement to count the sails in 
sight. But as the setting sun continually brought more and 
more to light, still further in the horizon, the last count always 
had the advantage, till by the time the last rays streamed 
over the sea, I had doubled and trebled my first number; 
though I could no longer class them all under the several 
heads of ships, barques, brigs, schooners, and sloops, but 
most were faint generic vessels only. And then the temperate 
twihght Hght, perchance, revealed the floating home of some 
sailor whose thoughts were already alienated from this Amer- 
ican coast, and directed towards the Europe of our dreams. 
— I have stood upon the same hill-top when a thunder shower 
rolling down from the Catskills and Highlands passed over 
the island, deluging the land, and when it had suddenly left 
us in sunshine, have seen it overtake successively with its 
huge shadow and dark descending wall of rain the vessels in 
the bay. Their bright sails were suddenly drooping and dark 
like the sides of barns, and they seemed to shrink before the 
storm ; while still far beyond them on the sea, through this 
dark veil, gleamed the sunny sails of those vessels which the 
storm had not yet reached. — And at midnight, when all 
around and overhead was darkness, I have seen a field of 
trembUng silvery hght far out on the sea, the reflection of 
the moonUght from the ocean, as if beyond the precincts of 
our night, where the moon traversed a cloudless heaven, — 
and sometimes a dark speck in its midst, where some fortunate 
vessel was pursuing its happy voyage by night. 

But to us river sailors the sun never rose out of ocean waves, 
but from some green coppice, and went down behind some dark 
mountain line. We, too, were but dwellers on the shore, 
like the bittern of the morning, and our pursuit the wrecks 
of snails and cockles. Nevertheless, we were contented to 
Jmow the better one fair particular shore. 



178 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

My life is like a stroll upon the beach, 

As near the ocean's edge as I can go, 
My tardy steps its waves sometimes o'erreach, 

Sometimes I stay to let them overflow. 

My sole employment 'tis, and scrupulous care, 
To place my gains beyond the reach of tides, 

Each smoother pebble, and each shell more rare, 
Which ocean kindly to my hand confides. 

I have but few companions on the shore, 

They scorn the strand who sail upon the sea, 

Yet oft I think the ocean they've sailed o'er 
Is deeper known upon the strand to me. 

The middle sea contains no crimson dulse. 
Its deeper waves cast up no j)earls to view, 

Along the shore my hand is on its pulse, 

And I converse with many a shipwrecked crew. 

The small houses which were scattered along the river at 
intervals of a mile or more, were commonly out of sight to us, 
but sometimes when we rowed near the shore, we heard the 
peevish note of a hen, or some slight domestic sound, which 
betrayed them. The lock-men's houses were particularly 
well placed, retired, and high, always at falls or rapids, and 
commanding the pleasantest reaches of the river, — for 
it is generally wider and more lake-like just above a fall, — 
and there they wait for boats. These humble dwellings, 
homely and sincere, in which a hearth was still the essential 
part, were more pleasing to our eyes than palaces or castles 
would have been. In the noon of these days, as we have said, 
we occasionally climbed the banks and approached these 
houses, to get a glass of water and make acquaintance with 
their inhabitants. High in the leafy bank, surrounded com- 
monly by a small patch of com and beans, squashes and 
melons, with sometimes a graceful hop-yard on one side, and 
some running vine over the windows, they appeared like bee- 
hives set to gather honey for a summer. I have not read 
of any Arcadian life which surpasses the actual luxury and 
serenity of these New England dwellings. For the outward 
gilding, at least, the age is golden enough. As you approach 
the sunny door-way, awakening the echoes by your steps, 
still no sound from these barracks of repose, and you fear 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 179 

that the gentlest knock may seem rude to the oriental dream- 
ers. The door is opened, perchance, by some Yankee-Hindoo 
woman, whose small-voiced but sincere hospitaUty, out of 
the bottomless depths of a quiet nature, has travelled quite 
round to the opposite side, and fears only to obtrude its kind- 
ness. You step over the white-scoured floor to the bright 
''dresser," Hghtly, as if afraid to disturb the devotions of 
the household, — for oriental dynasties appear to have passed 
away since the dinner table was last spread here, — and 
thence to the frequented curb, where you see your long-for- 
gotten, unshaven face at the bottom, in juxtaposition with 
new-made butter and the trout in the well. ''Perhaps you 
would like some molasses and ginger," suggests the faint 
noon voice. Sometimes there sits the brother who follows 
the sea, their representative man ; who knows only how far 
it is to the nearest port, no more distances, all the rest is sea 
and distant capes, — patting the dog, or dandUng the kitten 
in arms that were stretched by the cable and the oar, pulling 
against Boreas or the trade-winds. He looks up at the 
stranger, half pleased, half astonished, with a mariner's eye, 
as if he were a dolphin within cast. If men will beheve it, 
sua si bona ndrint, there are no more quiet Tempes, nor more 
poetic and Arcadian Uves, than may be Uved in these New 
England dwellings. We thought that the emplojnnent of 
their inhabitants by day would be to tend the flowers and 
herds, and at night, like the shepherds of old, to cluster and 
give names to the stars from the river banks. 

We passed a large and densely wooded island this forenoon, 
between Short's and Griffith's Falls, the fairest which we had 
met with, with a handsome grove of elms at its head. If it 
had been evening we should have been glad to camp there. 
Not long after one or two more occurred. The boatmen 
told us that the current had recently made important changes 
here. An island always pleases my imagination, even the 
smallest, as a small continent and integral portion of the 
globe. I have a fancy for building my hut on one. Even 
a bare grassy isle which I can see entirely over at a glance, 
has some undefined and mysterious charm for me. It is 
commonly the offspring of the junction of two rivers, whose 
currents bring down and deposit their respective sands in 
the eddy at their confluence, as it were the womb of a con- 
tinent. By what a delicate and far-fetched contribution 



180 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

every island is made! What an enterprise of Nature thus 
to lay the foundations of and to build up the future continent, 
of golden and silver sands and the ruins of forests, with ant- 
like industry! Pindar gives the following account of the 
origin of Thera, whence, in after times, Libyan Cyrene was 
settled by Battus. Triton, in the form of Eurypalus, presents 
a clod to Euphemus, one of the Argonauts, as they are about 
to return home. — 

" He knew of our haste. 
And immediately seizing a clod 
With his right hand, strove to give it 
As a chance stranger's gift. 

Nor did the hero disregard him, but leaping on the shore, 
Stretching hand to hand, 
Received the mystic clod. 
But I hear it sinking from the deck, 
Go with the sea brine 
At evening, accompanying the watery sea. 
Often indeed I urged the careless 
Menials to guard it, but their minds forgot. 
And now in this island the imperishable seed of spacious Libya 
Is spilled before its hour." 

It is a beautiful fable, also related by Pindar, how Helius, 
or the Sun, looked down into the sea one day, — when per- 
chance its rays were first reflected from some increasing 
glittering sand-bar, — and saw the fair and fruitful island 
of Rhodes 

"Springing up from the bottom, 
Capable of feeding many men and suitable for flocks;*' 

and at the nod of Zeus, 

"The island sprang from the watery 

Sea ; and the Genial Father of penetrating beams. 
Ruler of fire-breathing horses, has it." 

The shifting islands ! who would not be willing that his 
house should be undermined by such a foe ! The inhabitants 
of an island can tell what currents formed the land which he 
cultivates; and his earth is still being created or destroyed. 
There before his door, perchance, still empties the stream 
which brought down the material of his farm ages before, 
and is still bringing it down or washing it away, — the grace- 
ful, gentle robber ! 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 181 

Not long after this we saw the Piscataquoag, or Sparkling 
Water, emptying in on our left, and heard the Falls of Amos- 
keag above. Large quantities of lumber, as we read in the 
gazetteer, were still amiually floated down the Piscataquoag 
to the Merrimack, and there are many fine mill privileges 
on it. Just about the mouth of this river we passed the 
artificial falls where the canals of the Manchester Manu- 
facturing Company discharge themselves into the Merri- 
mack. They are striking enough to have a name, and, with 
the scenery of a Bashpish, would be visited from far and 
near. The water falls thirty or forty feet over seven or 
eight steep and narrow terraces of stone, probably to break 
its force, and is converted into one mass of foam. This 
canal water did not seem to be the worse for the wear, but 
foamed and fumed as purely, and boomed as savagely and 
impressively, as a mountain torrent, and though it came 
from under a factory, we saw a rainbow here. These are 
now the Amoskeag Falls, removed a mile down stream. 
But we did not tarry to examine them minutely, making 
haste to get past the village here collected, and out of hearing 
of the hammer which was laying the foundation of another 
Lowell on the banks. At the time of our voyage Manchester 
was a village of about two thousand inhabitants, where we 
landed for a moment to get some cool water, and where an 
inhabitant told us that he was accustomed to go across the 
river into Goffstown for his water. But now, after nine 
years, as I have been told and indeed have witnessed, it 
contains sixteen thousand inhabitants. From a hill on the 
road between Goffstown and Hooksett, four miles distant, 
I have since seen a thunder shower pass over, and the sun 
break out and shine on a city there, where I had landed nine 
years before in the fields to get a draught of water ; and 
there was waving a flag of its museum, — where " the only 
perfect skeleton of a Greenland or river whale in the United 
States " was to be seen, and I also read in its directory of 
a " Manchester Athenseum and Gallery of the Fine Arts." 

According to the gazetteer, the descent of Amoskeag 
Falls, wliich are the most considerable in the Merrimack, 
is fifty-four feet in half a mile. We locked ourselves through 
here with much ado, surmounting the successive watery 
steps of this river's stair-case in the midst of a crowd of 
villagers, jumping into the canal, to their amusement, to 



182 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD ^ 

save our boat from upsetting, and consuming much river 
water in our service. Amoskeag, or Namaskeak, is said 
to mean " great fishing place." It was hereabouts that 
the Sachem Wannalancet resided. Tradition says that his 
tribe, when at war with the Mohawks, concealed their 
provisions in the cavities of the rocks in the upper part of 
these falls. The Indians who hid their provisions in these 
holes, and affirmed " that God had cut them out for that 
purpose," understood their origin and use better than the 
Royal Society, who in their Transactions, in the last century, 
speaking of these very holes, declare that " they seem plainly 
to be artificial." Similar " pot-holes " may be seen at the 
Stone Flmne on this river, on the Ottaway, at Bellows' Falls 
on the Coimecticut, and in the limestone rock at Shel- 
burne Falls on Deerfield river in Massachusetts, and more 
or less generally about all falls. Perhaps the most remarkable 
curiosity of this kind in New England is the weU-known 
Basin on the Pemigewasset, one of the head-waters of this 
river, twenty by thirty feet in extent and proportionably 
deep, with a smooth and rounded brim, and filled with a cold, 
pellucid and greenish water. At Amoskeag the river is 
divided into many separate torrents and trickling rills by 
the rocks, and its volume is so much reduced by the drain 
of the canals that it does not fill its bed. There are many 
pot-holes here on a rocky island which the river washes over 
in high freshets. As at Shelburne Falls, where I first observed 
them, they are from one foot to four or five in diameter, and 
as many in depth, perfectly round and regular, with smooth 
and gracefully curved brims, like goblets. Their origin is 
apparent to the most careless observer. A stone which 
the current has washed down, meeting with obstacles, re- 
volves as on a pivot where it lies, gradually sinking in the 
course of centuries deeper and deeper into the rock, and in 
new freshets receiving the aid of fresh stones which are 
drawn into this trap and doomed to revolve there for an 
indefinite period, doing Sisyphus-like penance for stony sins, 
until they either wear out, or wear through the bottom of 
their prison, or else are released by some revolution of nature. 
There lie the stones of various sizes, from a pebble to a foot 
or two in diameter, some of which have rested from their 
labor only since the spring, and some higher up which have 
lain still and dry for ages, — we notice some here at least 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 183 

sixteen feet above the present level of the water, — while 
others are still revolving, and enjoy no respite at any season. 
In one instance, at Shelburne Falls, they have worn quite 
through the rock, so that a portion of the river leaks through 
in anticipation of the fall. Some of these pot-holes at 
Amoskeag, in a very hard brown stone, had an oblong cylin- 
drical stone of the same material loosely fitting them. One, 
as much as fifteen feet deep and seven or eight in diameter, 
which was worn quite through to the water, had a huge rock 
of the same material, smooth but of irregular form, lodged in 
it. Everywhere there were the rudiments or the wrecks 
of a dimple in the rock ; the rocky shells of whirlpools. As 
if, by force of example and sympathy after so many lessons, 
the rocks, the hardest material, had been endeavoring to 
whirl or flow into the forms of the most fluid. The finest 
workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle 
touches of air and water working at their leisure with a 
liberal allowance of time. 

Not only have some of these basins been forming for 
countless ages, but others exist which must have been com- 
pleted in a former geological period. There are some, we 
are told, in the town of Canaan in this State, with the stones 
still in them, on the height of land between the Merrimack 
and Connecticut, and nearly a thousand feet above these 
rivers, proving that the mountains and the rivers have 
changed places. There lie the stones which completed 
their revolutions perhaps before thoughts began to revolve 
in the brain of man. The periods of Hindoo and Chinese 
history, though they reach back to the time when the race 
of mortals is confounded with the race of gods, are as nothing 
compared with the periods which these stones have inscribed. 
That which commenced a rock when time was young, shall 
conclude a pebble in the unequal contest. With such es- 
pense of time and natural forces are our very paving stones 
produced. They teach us lessons, these dumb workers ; 
verily there are " sermons in stones and books in the run- 
ning streams." In these very holes the Indians hid their 
provisions ; but now there is no bread, but only its old 
neighbor stones at the bottom. Who knows how many races 
they have served thus? By as simple a law, some accidental 
by-law, perchance, our system itself was made ready for its 
inhabitants. 



184 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

These, and such as these, must be our antiquities, for lack 
of human vestiges. The monuments of heroes and the 
temples of the gods which may once have stood on the banks 
of this river, are now, at any rate, returned to dust and 
primitive soil. The murmur of imchronicled nations has 
died away along these shores, and once more Lowell and 
Manchester are on the trail of the Indian. 

The fact that Romans once inhabited her reflects no little 
dignity on Nature herself; that from some particular hill 
the Roman once looked out on the sea. She need not be 
ashamed of the vestiges of her children. How gladly the 
antiquary informs us that their vessels penetrated into this 
frith, or up that river of some remote isle ! Their military 
monuments still remain on the hills and under the sod of the 
valleys. The oft-repeated Roman story is written in still 
legible characters in every quarter of the old world, and but 
to-day, perchance, a new coin is dug up whose inscription 
repeats and confirms their fame. Some " Judcea Capta," 
with a woman mourning under a palm tree, with silent 
argument and demonstration confirms the pages of history. 

"Rome living was the world's sole ornament; 
And dead is now the world's sole monument." 



''With her own weight down pressed now she lies, 
And by her heaps her hugeness testifies." 

If one doubts whether Grecian valor and patriotism are 
not a fiction of the poets, he may go to Athens and see still 
upon the walls of the temple of Minerva the circular marks 
made by the shields taken from the enemy in the Persian 
war, which were suspended there. We have not far to seek 
for living and unquestionable evidence. The very dust 
takes shape and confirms some story which we had read. 
As Fuller said, commenting on the zeal of Camden, " A 
broken urn is a whole evidence; or an old gate still 
surviving out of which the city is rim out." When Solon 
endeavored to prove that Salamis had formerly belonged to 
the Athenians, and not to the Megareans, he caused the 
tombs to be opened, and showed that the inhabitants of 
Salamis turned the faces of their dead to the same side with 
the Athenians, but the Megareans to the opposite side. 
There they were to be interrogated. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 185 

Some minds are as little logical or argumentative as nature ; 
they can offer no reason or " guess," but they exhibit the 
solemn and incontrovertible fact. If a historical question 
arises, they cause the tombs to be opened. Their silent and 
practical logic convinces the reason and the miderstanding 
at the same time. Of such sort is always the only pertinent 
question and the only unanswerable reply. 

Our owm country furnishes antiquities as ancient and 
durable, and as useful, as any ; rocks at least as well covered 
with moss, and a soil which, if it is virgin, is but virgin mouldy 
the very dust of nature. What if we cannot read Rome, 
or Greece, Etruria, or Carthage, or Egypt, or Babylon, on 
these ; are our cliffs bare ? The lichen on the rocks is a rude 
and simple shield which beginning and imperfect Nature 
suspended there. Still hangs her wrinkled trophy. And 
here too the poet's eye may still detect the brazen nails which 
fastened Time's inscriptions, and if he has the gift, decipher 
them by this clue. The walls that fence our fields, as well 
as modern Rome, and not less the Parthenon itself, are all 
built of ruins. Here may be heard the din of rivers, and 
ancient winds which have long since lost their names sough 
through our woods ; — the first faint sounds of spring, older 
than the summer of Athenian glory, the titmouse lisping in 
the wood, the jay's scream and blue-bird's warble, and the 
hum of 

''bees that fly 
About the laughing blossoms of sallowy." 

Here is tlie gray dawn for antiquity, and our to-morrow's 
future should be at least paulo-post to theirs which we hav& 
put behind us. There are the red-maple and birchen leaves,, 
old runes which are not yet deciphered; catkins, pine- 
cones, vines, oak-leaves, and acorns ; the very things them- 
selves, and not their forms in stone, — so much the more 
ancient and venerable. And even to the current summer 
there has come down tradition of a hoary-headed master of 
all art, who once filled every field and grove with statues 
and god-like architecture, of every design which Greece has 
lately copied ; whose ruins are now mingled with the dust,, 
and not one block remains upon another. The century sun 
and unwearied rain have wasted them, till not one fragment 
from that quarry now exists ; and poets perchance will feign 
that gods sent down the material from heaven. 



186 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

What though the traveller tell us of the ruins of Egypt, 
are we so sick or idle, that we must sacrifice our America and 
to-day to some man's ill-remembered and indolent story? 
Carnac and Luxor are but names, or if their skeletons re- 
main, still more desert sand, and at length a wave of the 
Mediterranean sea, are needed to wash away the filth that 
attaches to their grandeur. Carnac ! Carnac ! here is Carnac 
for me. I behold the columns of a larger and purer temple. 

This is my Carnac, whose unmeasured dome 
Shelters the measuring art and measurer's home. 
Behold these flowers, let us be up with time, 
Not dreaming of three thousand years ago. 
Erect ourselves and let those columns lie. 
Not stoop to raise a foil against the sky. 
Where is the spirit of that time but in 
This present day, perchance this present Hne? 
Three thousand years ago are not agone, 
They are still lingering in this summer morn. 
And Memnon's Mother sprightly greets us now, 
Wearing her youthful radiance on her brow. 
If Carnac's columns still stand on the plain, 
To enjoy our opportunities they remain. 

In these parts dwelt the famous Sachem Passaconaway, 
who was seen by Gookin " at Pawtucket, when he was about 
one hundred and twenty years old." He was reputed a wise 
man and a powwow, and restrained his people from going 
to war with the English. They believed '' that he could 
make water burn, rocks move, and trees dance, and meta- 
morphose himself into a flaming man; that in winter he 
could raise a green leaf out of the ashes of a dry one, and 
produce a living snake from the skin of a dead one." In 
1660, according to Gookin, at a great feast and dance, he 
made his farewell speech to his people, in which he said, that 
as he was not likely to see them met together again, he would 
leave them this word of advice, to take heed how they quar- 
relled with their English neighbors, for though they might 
do them much mischief at first, it would prove the means 
of their own destruction. He himself, he said, had been 
as much an enemy to the English at their first coming as 
any, and had used all his arts to destroy them, or at least 
to prevent their settlement, but could by no means effect 
it. Gookin thought that he " possibly might have such a 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 187 

kind of spirit upon him as was upon Balaam who in xxiii. 
Numbers, 23, said ' Surely there is no enchantment against 
Jacob, neither is there any divination against Israel/ " 
His son Wannalancet carefully followed his advice, and when 
Philip's war broke out, he withdrew his followers to Pena- 
cook, now Concord in New Hampshire, from the scene of 
the war. On his return afterwards he visited the minister 
of Chelmsford, and, as is stated in the history of that town, 
" wished to know whether Chelmsford had suffered much dur- 
ing the war ; and being informed that it had not, and that God 
should be thanked for it, Wannalancet replied, * Me next.' " 

Manchester was the residence of John Stark, a hero of 
two wars, and survivor of a third, and at his death the last 
but one of the American generals of the Revolution. He was 
born in the adjoining town of Londonderry, then Nutfield, 
in 1728. As early as 1752, he was taken prisoner by the 
Indians while hunting in the wilderness near Baker's river ; 
he performed notable service as a captain of rangers in the 
French war ; commanded a regiment of the New Hampshire 
militia at the battle of Bunker Hill; and fought and won 
the battle of Bennington in 1777. He was past service in 
the last war, and died here in 1822, at the age of 94. His 
monument stands upon the second bank of the river, about 
a mile and a half above the falls, and commands a prospect 
several miles up and down the Merrimack. It suggested 
how much more impressive in the landscape is the tomb of 
a hero than the dwellings of the inglorious living. Who is 
most dead, — a hero by whose monument you stand, or his 
descendants of whom you have never heard? 

The graves of Passaconaway and Wannalancet are marked 
by no monument on the bank of their native river. 

Every town which we passed, if we may believe the 
gazetteer, had been the residence of some great man. But 
though we knocked at many doors, and even made particular 
inquiries, we could not find that there were any now living. 
Under the head of Litchfield we read, — 

" The Hon. Wyseman Clagett closed his life in this town." 
According to another, " He was a classical scholar, a good 
lawyer, a wit, and a poet." We saw his old gray house just 
below the Great Nesenkeag Brook. — Under the head of 
Merrimack, — " Hon. Matthew Thornton, one of the signers 



188 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

of the Declaration of American Independence, resided many- 
years in this town." His house too we saw from the river. 

— " Dr. Jonathan Gove, a man distinguished for his ur- 
banity, his talents and professional skill, resided in this town 
[Goffstown]. He was one of the oldest practitioners of 
medicine in the county. He was many years an active 
member of the legislature." — "Hon. Robert Means, who 
died Jan. 24, 1823, at the age of 80, was for a long period 
a resident in Amherst. He was a native of Ireland. In 
1764 he came to this country, where by his industry and 
application to business, he acquired a large property, and 
great respect." — " William Stinson, [one of the first settlers 
of Dunbarton,] born in Ireland, came to Londonderry with 
his father. He was much respected and was a useful man. 
James Rogers was from Ireland, and father to Major Robert 
Rogers. He was shot in the woods, being mistaken for a 
bear." — " Rev. Matthew Clark, second minister of London- 
derry, was a native of Ireland, who had in early life been an 
officer in the army, and distinguished himself in the defence 
of the city of Londonderry, when besieged by the army of 
King James IL, a.d. 1688-9. He afterwards relinquished 
a military life for the clerical profession. He possessed a 
strong mind, marked by a considerable degree of eccentricity. 
He died Jan. 25, 1735, and was borne to the grave, at his 
particular request, by his former companions in arms, of 
whom there were a considerable number among the early 
settlers of this towm; several of whom had been made free 
from taxes throughout the British dominions by King Wil- 
liam, for their bravery in that memorable siege." — Col. 
George Reid and Capt. David M 'Clary, also citizens of 
Londonderry, were " distinguished and brave " officers. 

— " Major Andrew M'Clary, a native of this town [Epsom], 
fell at the battle of Breed's Hill." — Many of these heroes, 
like the illustrious Roman, were plowing when the news of 
the massacre at Lexington arrived, and straightway left 
their plows in the furrow, and repaired to the scene of action. 
Some miles from where we now were, there once stood a 
guide-board which said, " 3 miles to Squire MacGaw's." — 

But generally speaking, the land is now, at any rate, very 
barren of men, and we doubt if there are as many hundreds 
as we read of. It may be that we stood too near. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 189 

Uncannimuc Mountain in Goffstown was visible from 
Amoskeag, five or six miles westward. Its name is said to 
mean " The Two Breasts/' there being two eminences some 
distance apart. The highest, which is about fourteen 
hundred feet above the sea, probably affords a more exten- 
sive view of the Merrimack valley and the adjacent country 
than any other hill, though it is somewhat obstructed by 
woods. Only a few short reaches of the river are visible, 
but you can trace its course far down stream by the sandy 
tracts on its banks. 

t- A little south of Uncannmiuc, about sixty years ago, as 
the story goes, an old woman who went out to gather penny- 
royal, tript her foot in the bail of a small brass kettle in the 
dead grass and bushes. Some say that flints and charcoal and 
some traces of a camp were also found. This kettle, holding 
about four quarts, is still preserved and used to dye thread 
in. It is supposed to have belonged to some old French or 
Indian hunter, who was killed in one of his hunting or scout- 
ing excursions, and so never returned to look after his kettle. 

But we were most interested to hear of the pennyroyal, 
it is so soothing to be reminded that wild nature produces 
anything ready for the use of man. Men know that some- 
thing is good. One says that it is yellow-dock, another that 
it is bitter-sweet, another that it is slippery-elm bark, bur- 
dock, catnip, calamint, elicampane, thoroughwort, or 
pennyroyal. A man may esteem himself happy when that 
which is his food is also his medicine. There is no kind of 
herb that grows, but somebody or other says that it is good. 
I am very glad to hear it. It reminds me of the first chapter 
of Genesis. But how should they know that it is good? 
That is the mystery to me. I am always agreeably dis- 
appointed; it is incredible that they should have found it 
out. Since all things are good, men fail at last to distin- 
guish which is the bane, and which the antidote. There 
are sure to be two prescriptions diametrically opposite. 
Stuff a cold and starve a cold are but two ways. They are 
the two practices, both always in full blast. Yet you must 
take advice of the one school as if there was no other. In 
respect to religion and the healing art, all nations are still 
in a state of barbarism. In the most civilized countries the 
priest is still but a Powwow, and the physician a Great 
Medicine. Consider the deference which is eveiywhere 



190 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

paid to a doctor's opinion. Nothing more strikingly betrays 
the credulity of mankind than medicine. Quackery is 
a thing universal, and universally successful. In this case 
it becomes literally true that no imposition is too great for 
the credulity of men. Priests and physicians should never 
look one another in the face. They have no common 
ground, nor is there any to mediate between them. When 
the one comes, the other goes. They could not come to- 
gether without laughter, or a significant silence, for the 
one's profession is a satire on the other's, and either's success 
would be the other's failure. It is wonderful that the phy- 
sician should ever die, and that the priest should ever live. 
Why is it that the priest is never called to consult with the 
physician ? It is because men believe practically that matter 
is independent of spirit. But what is quackery? It is 
commonly an attempt to cure the diseases of a man by 
addressing his body alone. There is need of a physician 
who shall minister to both soul and body at once, that is, 
to man. Now he falls between two stools. 

After passing through the locks, we had poled ourselves 
through the canal here, about half a mile in length, to the 
boatable part of the river. Above Amoskeag the river 
spreads out into a lake reaching a mile or two without a bend. 
There were many canal boats here bound up to Hooksett, 
about eight miles, and as they were going up empty with 
a fair wind, one boatman offered to take us in tow if we 
would wait. But when we came alongside, we found that 
they meant to take us on board, since otherwise we should 
clog their motions too much ; but as our boat was too heavy 
to be lifted aboard, we pursued our way up the stream, as 
before, while the boatmen were at their dinner, and came to 
anchor at length under some alders on the opposite shore, 
where we could take our lunch. Though far on one side, 
every sound was wafted over to us from the opposite bank, 
and from the harbor of the canal, and we could see every- 
thing that passed. By and by came several canal boats, 
at intervals of a quarter of a mile, standing up to Hooksett 
with a light breeze, and one by one disappeared round a 
point above. With their broad sails set, they moved slowly 
up the stream in the sluggish and fitful breeze, like one- 
winged antediluvian birds, and as if impelled by some 
mj^sterious counter current. It was a grand motion, so 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 191 

slow and stately, this " standing out," as the phrase is, 
expressing the gradual and steady progress of a vessel, as 
if it were by mere rectitude and disposition, without shuffling. 
Their sails, which stood so still, were like chips cast into the 
current of the air to show which way it set. At length the 
boat which we had spoken came along, keeping the middle 
of the stream, and when within speaking distance the steers- 
men called out ironically to say, that if we would come 
alongside now he would take us in tow; but not heeding 
his taunt, we still loitered in the shade till we had finished 
our lunch, and when the last boat had disappeared round 
the point with flapping sail, for the breeze had now sunk 
to a zephyr, with our own sails set, and plying our oars, we 
shot rapidly up the stream in pursuit, and as we glided close 
alongside, while they were vainly invoking ^olus to their 
aid, we returned their compliment by proposing, if they 
would throw us a rope, to '' take them in tow," to which 
these Merrimack sailors had no suitable answer ready. 
Thus we gradually overtook each boat in succession until 
we had the river to ourselves again. 

Our course this afternoon was between Manchester and 
Goffstown. 

While we float here, far from that tributary stream on 
whose banks our friends and kindred dwell, our thoughts, 
like the stars, come out of their horizon still; for there 
circulates a finer blood than Lavoisier has discovered the 
laws of, — the blood, not of kindred merely, but of kindness, 
whose pulse still beats at any distance and forever. After 
years of vain familiarity, some distant gesture or unconscious 
behavior, wliich we remember, speaks to us with more em- 
phasis than the wisest or kindest words. We are sometimes 
made aware of a kindness long passed, and realize that there 
have been times when our friends' thoughts of us were of so 
pure and lofty a character that they passed over us like the 
winds of heaven unnoticed; when they treated us not as 
what we were, but as what we aspired to be. There has 
just reached us, it may be, the nobleness of some such silent 
behavior, not to be forgotten, not to be remembered, and 
we shudder to think how it fell on us cold, though in some 
true but tardy hour we endeavor to wipe off these scores. 

In my experience, persons, when they are made the subject 
of conversation, though with a friend, are commonly the 



192 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

most prosaic and trivial of facts. The universe seems bank- 
rupt as soon as we begin to discuss the character of indi- 
viduals. Our discourse all runs to slander, and our limits 
grow narrower as we advance. How is it that we are 
impelled to treat our old friends so ill when we obtain 
new ones? The housekeeper says, I never had any new 
crockery in my life but I began to break the old. I say, 
let us speak of mushrooms and forest trees rather. Yet we 
can sometimes afford to remember them in private. — 

Lately, alas, I knew a gentle boy, 

Whose features all were cast in Virtue's mould, 

As one she had designed for Beauty's toy, 

But after manned him for her own stronghold. 

On every side he open was as day. 

That you might see no lack of strength within, 

For walls and ports do only serve alway 
For a pretence to feebleness and sin. 

Say not that Caesar was victorious, 

With toil and strife who stormed the House of Fame, 
In other sense this youth was glorious. 

Himself a kingdom wheresoe'er he came. 

No strength went out to get him victory, 

When all was income of its own accord ; 
For where he went none other was to see. 

But all were parcel of their noble lord. 

He forayed like the subtile haze of summer. 
That stilly shows fresh landscapes to our eyes, 

And revolutions works without a murmur. 
Or rustling of a leaf beneath the skies. 

So was I taken unawares by this, 

I quite forgot my homage to confess ; 
Yet now am forced to know, though hard it is, 

I might have loved him had I loved him less. 

Each moment as we nearer drew to each, 

A stern respect withheld us further yet, 
So that we seemed beyond each other's reach, 

And less acquainted than when first we met. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 193 

We two were one while we did sympathize, 
So could we not the simplest bargain drive ; 

And what avails it now that we are wise, 
If absence doth this doubleness contrive? 

Eternity may not the chance repeat, 

But I must tread my single w^ay alone, 
In sad remembrance that we once did meet, 

And know that bliss irrevocably gone. 

The spheres henceforth my elegy shall sing, 

For elegy has other subject none ; 
Each strain of music in my ears shall ring 

Knell of departure from that other one. 

Make haste and celebrate my tragedy ; 

With fitting strain resound ye woods and fields ; 
Sorrow is dearer in such case to me 

Than all the joys other occasion yields. 



Is't then too late the damage to repair ? 

Distance, forsooth, from my weak grasp hath reft 
The empty husk, and clutched the useless tare, 

But in my hands the wheat and kernel left. 

If I but love that virtue which he is. 

Though it be scented in the morning air. 

Still shall we be truest acquaintances, 

Nor mortals know a sympathy more rare. 

Friendship is evanescent in every man's experience, and 
remembered like heat lightning in past summers. Fair 
and flitting like a summer cloud ; — there is always some 
vapor in the air, no matter how long the drought; there 
are even April showers. Surely from time to time, for its 
vestiges never depart, it floats through our atmosphere. 
It takes place, like vegetation in so many materials, because 
there is such a law, but always without permanent form, 
though ancient and familiar as the sun and moon, and as 
sure to come again. The heart is forever inexperienced. 
They silently gather as by magic, these never failing, never 
quite deceiving visions, lik;e the bright and fleecy clouds in 
the calmest and clearest days. The Friend is some fair 
floating isle of palms eluding the mariner in Pacific seas. 
Many are the dangers to be encountered, equinoctial gales 



194 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

and coral reefs, ere he may sail before the constant trades. 
But who would not sail through mutiny and storm even 
over Atlantic waves, to reach the fabulous retreating shores 
of some continent man? The imagination still clings to 
the faintest tradition of 

THE ATLANTIDES 

The smothered streams of love, which flow 

More bright than Phlegethon, more low, 

Island us ever, hke the sea, 

In an Atlantic mystery. 

Our fabled shores none ever reach. 

No mariner has found our beach, 

Only our mirage now is seen, 

And neighboring waves with floating green. 

Yet stiU the oldest charts contain 

Some dotted outUne of our main ; 

In ancient times midsummer days 

Unto the western islands' gaze. 

To Teneriffe and the Azores, 

Have shown our faint and cloud-like shores. 

But sink not yet, ye desolate isles, 
Anon your coast with commerce smiles, 
And richer freights ye'll furnish far 
Than Africa or Malabar. 
Be fair, be fertile evermore, 
Ye rumored but untrodden shore. 
Princes and monarchs will contend 
Who first unto your land shall send, 
And pawn the jewels of the crown 
To call your distant soil their own. 

Columbus has sailed westward of these isles by the mariner's 
compass, but neither he nor his successors have found them. 
We are no nearer than Plato was. The earnest seeker and 
hopeful discoverer of this New World always haunts the 
outskirts of his time, and walks through the densest crowd 
uninterrupted, and as it were in a straight line. — 

Sea and land are but his neighbors, 

And companions in his labors, 

Who on the ocean's verge and firm land's end 

Doth long and truly seek his Friend. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 195 

Many men dwell far inland, 
But he alone sits on the strand. 
Whether he ponders men or books, 
Always still he seaward looks, 
Marine news he ever reads, 
And the slightest glances heeds, 
Feels the sea breeze on his cheek 
At each word the landsmen speak, 
In every companion's eye 
A sailing vessel doth descry ; 
In the ocean's sullen roar 
From some distant port he hears, 
Of wrecks upon a distant shore, 
And the ventures of past years. 

Who does not walk on the plain as amid the columns of 
Tadmore of the desert? There is on the earth no institu- 
tion which Friendship has established; it is not taught by 
any religion; no scripture contains its maxims. It has no 
temple, nor even a solitary column. There goes a rumor that 
the earth is inhabited, but the shipwrecked mariner has not 
seen a footprint on the shore. The hunter has found only 
fragments of pottery and the monuments of inhabitants. 

However, our fates at least are social. Our courses do not 
diverge ; but as the web of destiny is woven it is fulled, and 
we are cast more and more into the centre. Men naturally, 
though feebly, seek this alliance, and their actions faintly 
foretell it. We are inclined to lay the chief stress on likeness 
and not on difference, and in foreign bodies we admit that 
there are many degrees of warmth below blood heat, but 
none of cold above it. 

One or two persons come to my house from time to time, 
there being proposed to them the faint possibility of inter- 
course. They are as full as they are silent, and wait for my 
plectrum to stir the strings of their l3a-e. If they could ever 
come to the length of a sentence, or hear one, on that ground 
they are dreaming of! They speak faintly, and do not ob- 
trude themselves. They have heard some news, which none, 
not even they themselves, can impart. It is a wealth they 
bear about them which can be expended in various ways. 
What came they out to seek? 

No word is oftener on the lips of men than Friendship, 



196 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

and indeed no thought is more familiar to their aspirations. 
All men are dreaming of it, and its drama, which is always a 
tragedy, is enacted daily. It is the secret of the universe. 
You may tread the town, you may wander the country, and 
none shall ever speak of it, yet thought is everywhere busy 
about it, and the idea of what is possible in this respect affects 
our behavior toward all new men and women, and a great 
many old ones. Nevertheless, I can remember only two or 
three essays on this subject in all literature. No wonder 
that the Mythology, and Arabian Nights, and Shakespeare, 
and Scott's novels entertain us, — we are poets and fablers 
and dramatists and novelists ourselves. We are continually 
acting a part in a more interesting drama than any written. 
We are dreaming that our Friends are our Friends, and that 
we are our Friends' Friends. Our actual Friends are but 
distant relations of those to whom we are pledged. We never 
exchange more than three words with a Friend in our lives 
on that level to which our thoughts and feelings almost 
habitually rise. One goes forth prepared to say "Sweet 
Friends!" and the salutation is "Damn your eyes!" But 
never mind; faint heart never won true Friend. my 
Friend, may it come to pass, once, that when you are my 
Friend I may be yours. 

Of what use the friendliest disposition even, if there are 
no hours given to Friendship, if it is forever postponed to 
unimportant duties and relations? Friendship is first, 
Friendship last. But it is equally impossible to forget our 
Friends, and to make them answer to our ideal. When 
they say farewell, then indeed we begin to keep them com- 
pany. How often we find ourselves turning our backs on 
our actual Friends, that we may go and meet their ideal 
cousins. I would that I were worthy to be any man's Friend. 

What is commonly honored with the name of Friendship 
is no very profound or powerful instinct. Men do not, 
after all, love their Friends greatly. I do not often see the 
farmers made seers and wise to the verge of insanity by their 
Friendship for one another. They are not often transfigured 
and translated by love in each other's presence. I do not 
observe them purified, refined, and elevated by the love of a 
man. If one abates a little the price of his wood, or gives a 
neighbor his vote at town-meeting, or a barrel of apples, or 
lends him his wagon frequently, it is esteemed a rare instance 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 197 

of Friendship. Nor do the farmers' wives lead lives conse- 
crated to Friendship. I do not see the pair of farmer friends 
of either sex prepared to stand against the world. There are 
only two or three couples in history. To say that a man is 
your Friend, means commonly no more than this, that he 
is not your enemy. Most contemplate only what would 
be the accidental and trifling advantages of Friendship, as 
that the Friend can assist in time of need, by his substance, 
or his influence, or his counsel; but he who foresees such 
advantages in this relation proves himself blind to its real 
advantage, or indeed wholly inexperienced in the relation 
itself. Such services are particular and menial, compared 
with the perpetual and all-embracing service which it is. 
Even the utmost good-will and harmony and practical kind- 
ness are not sufficient for Friendship, for Friends do not live 
in harmony merely, as some say, but in melody. We do 
not wish for Friends to feed and clothe our bodies, — neigh- 
bors are kind enough for that, — but to do the like office to 
our spirits. For this few are rich enough, however well 
disposed they may be. 

Think of the importance of Friendship in the education of 
men. It will make a man honest ; it will make him a hero ; 
it will make him a saint. It is the state of the just dealing 
with the just, the magnanimous with the magnanimous, the 
sincere with the sincere, man with man. — 

"Why love among the virtues is not known, 
Is that love is them all contract in one," 

All the abuses which are the object of reform with the 
philanthropist, the statesman, and the housekeeper, are 
unconsciously amended in the intercourse of Friends. A 
Friend is one who incessantly pays us the compliment of 
expecting from us all the virtues, and who can appreciate 
them in us. It takes two to speak the truth, — one to 
speak, and another to hear. How can one treat with mag- 
nanimity mere wood and stone? If we dealt only with the 
false and dishonest, we should at last forget how to speak 
truth. In our daily intercourse with men, our nobler facul- 
ties are dormant and suffered to rust. None will pay us the 
compliment to expect nobleness from us. We ask our 
neighbor to suffer himself to be dealt with truly, sincerely, 
nobly; but he answers no by his deafness. He does not 



198 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

even hear this prayer. He says practically, — I will be 
content if you treat me as no better than I should be, as de- 
ceitful, mean, dishonest, and selfish. For the most part, we 
are contented so to deal and to be dealt with, and we do not 
think that for the mass of men there is any truer and nobler 
relation possible. A man may have good neighbors, so 
called, and acquaintances, and even companions, wife, par- 
ents, brothers, sisters, children, who meet himself and one 
another on this ground only. The State does not demand 
justice of its members, but thinks that it succeeds very well 
with the least degree of it, hardly more than rogues practice ; 
and so do the family and the neighborhood. What is com- 
monly called Friendship even is only a little more honor 
among rogues. 

But sometimes we are said to love another, that is to stand 
in a true relation to him, so that we give the best to, and 
receive the best from, him. Between whom there is hearty 
truth there is love; and in proportion to our truthfulness 
and confidence in one another, our lives are divine and miracu- 
lous, and answer to our ideal. There are passages of affec- 
tion in our intercourse with mortal men and women, such as 
no prophecy had taught us to expect, which transcend our 
earthly life, and anticipate heaven for us. What is this 
Love that may come right into the middle of a prosaic Goffs- 
town day, equal to any of the gods? that discovers a new 
world, fair and fresh and eternal, occupying the place of this 
old one, when to the common eye a dust has settled on the 
universe? which world cannot else be reached, and does not 
exist. What other words, we may almost ask, are memorable 
and worthy to be repeated than those which love has in- 
spired? It is wonderful that they were ever uttered. They 
are few and rare, indeed, but, like a strain of music, they are 
incessantly repeated and modulated by the memory. All 
other words crumble off with the stucco which overlies the 
heart. We should not dare to repeat them now aloud. We 
are not competent to hear them at all times. 

The books for young people say a great deal about the 
selection of Friends; it is because they really have nothing 
to say about Friends. They mean associates and confidants 
merely. "Know that the contrariety of foe and Friend pro- 
ceeds from God." ^ Friendship takes place between those 
who have an affinity for one another, and is a perfectly natu- 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 199 

ral and inevitable result. No professions nor advances will 
avail. Even speech, at first, necessarily has nothing to do 
with it ; but it follows after silence, as the buds in the graft 
do not put forth into leaves till long after the graft has taken. 
It is a drama in which the parties have no part to act. We 
are all Mussulmans and fatalists in this respect. Impatient 
and uncertain lovers think that they must say or do some- 
thing kind whenever they meet; they must never be cold. 
But they who are Friends do not do what they think they 
must, but what they must. Even their Friendship is in one 
sense but a sublime phenomenon to them. 

The true and not despairing Friend will address his Friend 
in some such terms as these. 

"I never asked thy leave to let me love thee, — I have a 
right. I love thee not as something private and personal, 
which is your own, but as something universal and worthy 
of love, which I have found. how I think of you ! You 
are purely good, — you are infinitely good. I can trust you 
forever. I did not think that humanity was so rich. Give 
me an opportunity to live." 

"You are the fact in a fiction, — you are the truth more 
strange and admirable than fiction. Consent only to be 
what you are. I alone will never stand in your way." 

"This is what I would like, — to be as intimate w^ith you 
as our spirits are intimate, — respecting you as I respect my 
ideal. Never to profane one another by word or action, 
even by a thought. Between us, if necessary, let there be no 
acquaintance." 

"I have discovered you; how can you be concealed from 
me?" 

The Friend asks no return but that his Friend will re- 
ligiously accept and wear and not disgrace his apotheosis of 
him. They cherish each other's hopes. They are kind to 
each other's dreams. 

Though the poet says, "'T is the preeminence of Friend- 
ship to impute excellence," yet we can never praise our 
Friend, nor esteem him praiseworthy, nor let him think that 
he can please us by any behavior, or ever treat us well enough. 
That kindness which has so good a reputation elsewhere can 
least of all consist with this relation, and no such affront 



200 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

can be offered to a Friend, as a conscious good-will, a friend- 
liness which is not a necessity of the Friend's nature. 

The sexes are naturally most strongly attracted to one 
another, by constant constitutional differences, and are most 
commonly and surely the complements of one another. How 
natural and easy it is for man to secure the attention of 
woman to what interests himself. Men and women of equal 
culture, thrown together, are sure to be of a certain value 
to one another, more than men to men. There exists al- 
ready a natural disinterestedness and liberality in such 
society, and I think that any man will more confidently carry 
his favorite books to read to some circle of intelligent women, 
than to one of his own sex. The visit of man to man is wont 
to be an interruption, but the sexes naturally expect one 
another. Yet Friendship is no respecter of sex; and per- 
haps it is more rare between the sexes, than between two of 
the same sex. 

Friendship is, at any rate, a relation of perfect equality. 
It cannot well spare any outward sign of equal obligation 
and advantage. The nobleman can never have a Friend 
among his retainers, nor the king among his subjects. Not 
that the parties to it are in all respects equal, but they are 
equal in all that respects or affects their Friendship. The 
one's love is exactly balanced and represented by the other's. 
Persons are only the vessels which contain the nectar, and 
the hydrostatic paradox is the symbol of love's law. It 
finds its level and rises to its fountain-head in all breasts, and 
its slenderest column balances the ocean. — 

Love equals swift and slow, 

And high and low, 
Racer and lame, 

The hunter and his game. 

The one sex is not, in this respect, more tender than the 
other. A hero's love is as delicate as a maiden's. 

Confucius said, ''Never contract Friendship with a man 
that is not better than thyself." It is the merit and preser- 
vation of Friendship, that it takes place on a level higher than 
the actual characters of the parties would seem to warrant. 
The rays of light come to us in such a curve that every man 
whom we meet appears to be taller than he actually is. Such 
foundation has civility. My Friend is that one whom I can 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 201 

associate with my choicest thought. I always assign to 
him a nobler employment in my absence than I ever find 
him engaged in; and I imagine that the hours which he 
devotes to me were snatched from a higher society. The 
sorest insult which I ever received from a Friend was, when 
he behaved with the license which only long and cheap ac- 
quaintance allows to one's faults, in my presence, without 
shame, and still addressed me in friendly accents. Be- 
ware, lest thy Friend learn at last to tolerate one frailty of 
thine, and so an obstacle be raised to the progress of thy love. 
Friendship is never established as an understood relation. 
Do you demand that I be less your Friend that you may know 
it? Yet what right have I to think that another cherishes 
so rare a sentiment for me? It is a miracle which requires 
constant proofs. It is an exercise of the purest imagina- 
tion and the rarest faith. It says by a silent but eloquent 
behavior, — "I will be so related to thee as thou canst 
imagine ; even so thou mayest believe. I will spend truth, 
— all my wealth on thee," — and the Friend responds 
silently through his nature and life, and treats his Friend 
with the same divine courtesy. He knows us literally through 
thick and thin. He never asks for a sign of love, but can 
distinguish it by the features which it naturally wears. We 
never need to stand upon ceremony with him with regard 
to his visits. Wait not till I invite thee, but observe that I 
am glad to see thee when thou comest. It would be paying 
too dear for thy visit to ask for it. Where my Friend lives 
there are all riches and every attraction, and no slight obstacle 
can keep me from him. Let me never have to tell thee what 
I have not to tell. Let our intercourse be wholly above our- 
selves, and draw us up to it. The language of Friendship 
is not words but meanings. It is an intelligence above 
language. One imagines endless conversations with his 
Friend, in which the tongue shall be loosed, and thoughts 
be spoken without hesitancy, or end ; but the experience is 
commonly far otherwise. Acquaintances may come and go, 
and have a word ready for every occasion ; but what puny 
word shall he utter whose very breath is thought and mean- 
ing? Suppose you go to bid farewell to your Friend who is 
setting out on a journey ; what other outward sign do you 
know of than to shake his hand? Have you any palaver 
ready for him then? any box of salve to commit to his 



202 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

pocket ? any particular message to send by him ? any state- 
ment which you had forgotten to make ? — as if you could 
forget anything. — No, it is much that you take his hand 
and say Farewell ; that you could easily omit ; so far custom 
has prevailed. It is even painful, if he is to go, that he should 
linger so long. If he must go, let him go quickly. Have 
you any last words? Alas, it is only the word of words, 
which you have so long sought and found not; you have 
not a first word yet. There are few even whom I should 
venture to call earnestly by their most proper names. A 
name pronounced is the recognition of the individual to 
whom it belongs. He who can pronounce my name aright, 
he can call me, and is entitled to my love and service. 

The violence of love is as much to be dreaded as that of 
hate. "When it is durable it is serene and equable. Even 
its famous pains begin only with the ebb of love, for few 
are indeed lovers, though all would fain be. It is one proof 
of a man's fitness for Friendship that he is able to do without 
that which is cheap and passionate. A true Friendship is 
as wise as it is tender. The parties to it yield implicitly to 
the guidance of their love, and know no other law nor kind- 
ness. It is not extravagant and insane, but what it says is 
something established henceforth, and will bear to be stereo- 
typed. It is a truer truth, it is better and fairer news, and 
no time will ever shame it, or prove it false. This is a plant 
which thrives best in a temperate zone, where summer and 
winter alternate with one another. The Friend is a neces- 
sarius, and meets his Friend on homely ground; not on 
carpets and cushions, but on the ground and on rocks they 
will sit, obeying the natural and primitive laws. They will 
meet without any outcry, and part without loud sorrow. 
Their relation implies such qualities as the warrior prizes; 
for it takes a valor to open the hearts of men as well as the 
gates of cities. 

The Friendship which Wawatam testified for Henry the 
fur-trader, as described in the latter's "Adventures/' so 
almost bare and leafless, yet not blossomless nor fruitless, 
is remembered with satisfaction and security. The stern 
imperturbable warrior, after fasting, solitude, and morti- 
fication of body, comes to the white man's lodge, and affirms 
that he is the white brother whom he saw in his dream, and 
adopts him henceforth. He buries the hatchet as it regards 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 203 

his friend, and they hunt and feast and make maple-sugar 
together. ''Metals unite from fluxility; birds and beasts 
from motives of convenience ; fools from fear and stupidity ; 
and just men at sight." If Wawatam would taste the ''white 
man's milk" with his tribe, or take his bowl of human broth 
made of the trader's fellow-countrymen, he first finds a place 
of safety for his Friend, whom he has rescued from a similar 
fate. At length, after a long winter of undisturbed and 
happy intercourse in the family of the chieftain in the wilder- 
ness, hunting and fishing, they return in the spring to Michili- 
mackinac to dispose of their furs ; and it becomes necessary 
for Wawatam to take leave of his Friend at the Isle aux 
Outardes, when the latter, to avoid his enemies, proceeded 
to the Sault de Sainte Marie, supposing that they wer6 to 
be separated for a short time only. "We now exchanged 
farewells," says Henry, "with an emotion entirely reciprocal. 
I did not quit the lodge without the most grateful sense of 
the many acts of goodness which I had experienced in it, 
nor without the sincerest respect for the virtues which I 
had witnessed among its members. All the family ac- 
companied me to the beach ; and the canoe had no sooner 
put off than Wawatam commenced an address to the Kichi 
Manito, beseeching him to take care of me, his brother, till 
we should next meet. — We had proceeded to too great a 
distance to allow of our hearing his voice, before Wawatam had 
ceased to offer up his prayers." We never hear of him again. 

Friendship is not so kind as is imagined ; it has not much 
human blood in it, but consists with a certain disregard for 
men and their erections, the Christian duties and humanities, 
while it purifies the air like electricity. There may be the 
sternest tragedy in the relation of two more than usually 
innocent and true to their highest instincts. We may call 
it an essentially heathenish intercourse, free and irresponsible 
in its nature, and practising all the virtues gratuitously. It 
is not the highest sympathy merely, but a pure and lofty 
society, a fragmentary and godlike intercourse of ancient 
date, still kept up at intervals, which, remembering itself, 
does not hesitate to disregard the humbler rights and duties 
of humanity. It requires immaculate and godlike qualities 
full-grown, and exists at all only by condescension and an- 
ticipation of the remotest future. We love nothing which is 
merely good and not fair, if such a thing is possible. Nature 



204 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

puts some kind of blossom before every fruit, not simply a 
calyx behind it. When the Friend comes out of his heathen- 
ism and superstition, and breaks his idols, being converted 
by the precepts of a newer testament ; when he forgets his 
mjrthology, and treats his Friend like a Christian, or as he 
can afford, — then Friendship ceases to be Friendship, and 
becomes charity ; that principle which established the alms- 
house is now beginning with its charity at home, and estab- 
lishing an almshouse and pauper relations there. 

As for the number which this society admits, it is at any 
rate to be begun with one, the noblest and greatest that we 
know, and whether the world will ever carry it further, 
whether, as Chaucer affirms, 

"There be mo sterres in the skie than a pair," 

remains to be proved ; — 

"And certaine he is well begone 
Among a thousand that findeth one." 

We shall not surrender ourselves heartily to any while we 
are conscious that another is more deser^nng of our love. 
Yet Friendship does not stand for numbers ; the Friend does 
not count his Friends on his fingers ; they are not numerable. 
The more there are included by this bond, if they are indeed 
included, the rarer and diviner the quality of the love that 
binds them. I am ready to beUeve that as private and inti- 
mate a relation may exist by which three are embraced, as 
between two. Indeed we cannot have too many friends; 
the virtue which we appreciate we to some extent appro- 
priate, so that thus we are made at last more fit for every 
relation of life. A base Friendship is of a narrowing and 
exclusive tendency, but a noble one is not exclusive ; its very 
superfluity and dispersed love is the humanity which sweetens 
society, and sympathizes with foreign nations; for though 
its foundations are private, it is in effect, a public affair and 
a public advantage, and the Friend, more than the father of a 
family, deserves well of the state. 

The only danger in Friendship is that it will end. It is a 
delicate plant though a native. The least im worthiness, 
even if it be unknown to one's self, vitiates it. Let the 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 205 

Friend know that those faults which he observes in his 
Friend his own faults attract. There is no rule more in- 
variable than that we are paid for our suspicions by finding 
what we suspected. By our narrowness and prejudices we 
say, I will have so much and such of you, my Friend, no 
more. Perhaps there are none charitable, none disinterested, 
none wise, noble, and heroic enough, for a true and lasting 
Friendship. 

I sometimes hear my Friends complain finely that I do 
not appreciate their fineness. I shall not tell them whether 
I do or not. As if they expected a vote of thanks for every 
fine thing which they uttered or did. Who knows but it 
was finely appreciated. It may be that your silence was the 
finest thing of the two. There are some things which a man 
never speaks of, which are much finer kept silent about. To 
the highest communications we only lend a silent ear. Our 
finest relations are not simply kept silent about, but buried 
under a positive depth of silence, never to be revealed. It 
may be that we are not even yet acquainted. In human 
intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunder- 
standing about words, but when silence is not understood. 
Then there can never be an explanation. What avails it 
that another loves you, if he does not understand you? 
Such love is a curse. What sort of companions are they who 
are presuming always that their silence is more expressive 
than yours? Plow foolish, and inconsiderate, and unjust, 
to conduct as if you were the only party aggrieved! Has 
not your Friend always equal ground of complaint? No 
doubt my Friends sometimes speak to me in vain, but they 
do not know what things I hear which they are not aware 
that they have spoken. I know that I have frequently 
disappointed them by not giving them words when they 
expected them, or such as they expected. Whenever I see 
my Friend I speak to him, but the expector, the man with 
the ears, is not he. They will complain too that you are 
hard. O ye that would have the cocoanut wrong side out- 
wards, when next I weep I will let you know. They ask for 
words and deeds, when a true relation is word and deed. 
If they know not of these things, how can they be informed ? 
We often forbear to confess our feeUngs, not from pride, but 
for fear that we could not continue to love the one who re- 
quired us to give such proof of our affection. 



206 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

I know a woman who possesses a restless and intelligent 
mind, interested in her own culture, and earnest to enjoy the 
highest possible advantages, and I meet her with pleasure 
as a natural person who not a little provokes me, and I sup- 
pose is stimulated in turn by myseK. Yet our acquaintance 
plainly does not attain to that degree of confidence and senti- 
ment which women, which all, in fact, covet. I am glad to 
help her, as I am helped by her ; I like very well to know her 
with a sort of stranger's privilege, and hesitate to visit her 
often, like her other Friends. My nature pauses here, I do 
not well know why. Perhaps she does not make the highest 
demand on me, a religious demand. Some, with whose 
prejudices or pecuhar bias I have no sympathy, yet inspire 
me with confidence, and I trust that they confide in me also 
as a reUgious heathen at least, — a good Greek. I too have 
principles as well founded as their own. If this person could 
conceive that, without wilfulness, I associate with her as 
far as our destinies are coincident, as far as our Good Geniuses 
permit, and still value such intercourse, it would be a grate- 
ful assurance to me. I feel as if I appeared careless, indiffer- 
ent, and without principle to her, not expecting more, and 
yet not content with less. If she could know that I make an 
infinite demand on myself, as well as on all others, she would 
see that this true though incomplete intercourse, is infinitely 
better than a more unreserved but falsely grounded one, 
without the principle of growth in it. For a companion, I 
require one who will make an equal demand on me with my 
own genius. Such a one will always be rightly tolerant. It 
is suicide and corrupts good manners to welcome any less 
than this. I value and trust those who love and praise my 
aspiration rather than my performance. If you would not 
stop to look at me, but look whither I am looking and further, 
then my education could not dispense with your company. 

My love must be as free 

As is the eagle's wing, 
Hovering o'er land and sea 

And everything. 

I must not dim my eye 

In thy saloon, 
I must not leave my sky 

And nightly moon. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 207 

Be not the fowler's net 

Which stays my flight, 
And craftily is set 

T' allure the sight. 



But be the favoring gale 

That bears me on, 
And still doth fill m}'- sail 

When thou art gone. 

I cannot leave my sky 

For thy caprice, 
True love would soar as high 

As heaven is. 



The eagle would not brook 
Her mate thus won. 

Who trained his eye to look 
Beneath the sun. 



Nothing is so difficult as to help a Friend in matters which 
do not require the aid of Friendship, but only a cheap and 
trivial service, if your Friendship wants the basis of a thorough 
practical acquaintance. I stand in the friendliest relation, 
on social and spiritual grounds, to one who does not per- 
ceive what practical skill I have, but when he seeks my 
assistance in such matters, is wholly ignorant of that one whom 
he deals with ; does not use my skill, which in such matters 
is much greater than his, but only my hands. I know another 
who, on the contrary, is remarkable for his discrimination in 
this respect ; who knows how to make use of the talents of 
others when he does not possess the same ; knows when not 
to look after or oversee, and stops short at his man. It is a 
rare pleasure to serve him, which all laborers know. I am 
not a little pained by the other kind of treatment. It is as 
if, after the friendliest and most ennobling intercourse, your 
Friend should use you as a hammer and drive a nail with 
your head, all in good faith ; notwithstanding that you are 
a tolerable carpenter, as well as his good Friend, and would 
use a hammer cheerfully in his service. This want of per- 
ception is a defect which all the virtues of the heart cannot 
supply. — 



208 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

The Good how can we trust? 

Only the Wise are just. 

The Good we use, 

The Wise we cannot choose. 

These there are none above ; 

The Good they know and love, 

But are not known again 

By those of lesser ken. 

They do not charm us with their eyes, 

But they transfix with their advice ; 

No partial sympathy they feel 

With private woe or private weal, 

But with the universe joy and sigh, 

Whose knowledge is their sympathy. 

Confucius said, "To contract ties of Friendship with any 
one, is to contract Friendship with his virtue. There ought 
not to be any other motive in Friendship." But men v/ish 
us to contract Friendship with their vice also. I have a 
Friend who wishes me to see that to be right which I know 
to be wrong. But if Friendship is to rob me of my eyes, if 
it is to darken the day, I will have none of it. It should be 
expansive and inconceivably liberalizing in its effects. True 
Friendship can afford true knowledge. It does not depend 
on darkness and ignorance. A want of discernment cannot 
be an ingredient in it. If I can see my Friend's virtues more 
distinctly than another's, his faults too are made more con- 
spicuous by contrast. We have not so good a right to hate 
any as our Friend. Faults are not the less faults because 
they are invariably balanced by corresponding virtues, and 
for a fault there is no excuse, though it may appear greater 
than it is in many ways. I have never known one who could 
bear criticism, who could not be flattered, who would not 
bribe his judge, or was content that the truth should be 
loved always better than himself. 

If two travellers would go their way harmoniously to- 
gether, the one must take as true and just a view of things 
as the other, else their path will not be strewn with roses. 
Yet you can travel profitably and pleasantly even with a 
blind man, if he practises common courtesy, and when you 
converse about the scenery will remember that he is blind 
but that you can see ; and you will not forget that his sense 
of hearing is probably quickened by his want of sight. Other- 
wise you will not long keep company. A blind man, and a 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 209 

man in whose eyes there was no defect, were walking together, 
when they came to the edge of a precipice. — ''Take care ! 
my friend," said the latter, "here is a steep precipice; go 
no further this way." — "I know better," said the other, 
and stepped off. 

It is impossible to say all that we think, even to our truest 
Friend. We may bid him farewell forever sooner than com- 
plain, for our complaint is too well grounded to be uttered. 
There is not so good an understanding between any two, 
but the exposure by the one of a serious fault will produce 
a misunderstanding in proportion to its heinousness. The 
constitutional differences which always exist, and are obstacles 
to a perfect Friendship, are forever a forbidden theme to 
the lips of Friends. They advise by their whole behavior. 
Nothing can reconcile them but love. They are fatally late 
when they undertake to explain and treat with one another 
lilce foes. Who will take an apology for a Friend? They 
must apologize like dew and frost, which are off again with 
the sun, and which all men know in their hearts to be be- 
neficent. The necessity itseff for explanation, — what ex- 
planation will atone for that? True love does not quarrel 
for shght reasons, such mistakes as mutual acquaintances 
can explain away, but alas, however slight the apparent 
cause, only for adequate and fatal and everlasting reasons, 
which can never be set aside. Its quarrel, if there is any, 
is ever recurring, notwithstanding the beams of affection 
which invariably come to gild its tears; as the rainbow, 
however beautiful and unerring a sign, does not promise 
fair weather forever, but only for a season. I have known 
two or three persons pretty well, and yet I have never known 
advice to be of use but in trivial and transient matters. One 
may know what another does not, but the utmost kindness 
cannot impart what is requisite to make the advice useful. 
We must accept or refuse one another as we are. I could 
tame a hyena more easily than my Friend. He is a material 
which no tool of mine will work. A naked savage will fell 
an oak with a fire-brand, and wear a hatchet out of the rock 
by friction, but I cannot hew the smallest chip out of the 
character of my Friend, either to beautify or deform it. 

The lover learns at last that there is no person quite trans- 
parent and trustworthy, but every one has a devil in him 
that is capable of any crime in the long run. Yet, as an 



210 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

oriental philosopher has said, "Although Friendship be- 
tween good men is interrupted, their principles remain 
mialtered. The stalk of the lotus may be broken, and the 
fibres remain connected." 

Ignorance and bunghng with love are better than wisdom 
and skill without. There maj'' be courtesy, there may be 
even temper, and wit, and talent, and sparkling conversation, 
there may be good-will even, — and yet the humanest and 
divinest faculties pine for exercise. Our life without love 
is like coke and ashes. Men may be pure as alabaster and 
Parian marble, elegant as a Tuscan villa, sublime as Niagara, 
and yet if there is no milk mingled with the wine at their 
entertainments, better is the hospitahty of Goths and Vandals. 
My Friend is not of some other race or family of men, but 
flesh of my flesh, bone of my bone. He is my real brother. 
I see his nature groping yonder so like mine. We do not 
live far apart. Have not the fates associated us in many 
ways ? Is it of no significance that we have so long partaken 
of the same loaf, dranlc at the same fountain, breathed the 
same air, summer and winter, felt the same heat and cold; 
that the same fruits have been pleased to refresh us both, 
and we have never had a thought of different fibre the one 
from the other? 

Nature doth have her dawn each day, 

But mine are far between ; 
Content, I cry, for sooth to say. 

Mine brightest are I ween. 

For when my sun doth deign to rise, 

Though it be her noontide, 
Her fairest field in shadow lies. 

Nor can my light abide. 

Sometimes I bask me in her day, 

Conversing with my mate, 
But if we interchange one ray, 

Forthwith her heats abate. 

Through his discourse I climb and see. 

As from some eastern hill, 
A brighter morrow rise to me 

Than lieth in her skill. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 211 

As 't were two summer days in one, 

Two Sundays come together, 
Our rays united make one sun, 

With fairest summer weather. 

As surely as the sunset in my latest November shall trans- 
late me to the ethereal world, and remind me of the ruddy 
morning of youth ; as surely as the last strain of music which 
falls on my decaying ear shall make age to be forgotten, 
or, in short, the manifold influences of nature survive during 
the term of our natural life, so surely my Friend shall forever 
be my Friend, and reflect a ray of God to me, and time shall 
foster and adorn and consecrate our Friendship, no less 
than the ruins of temples. As I love nature, as I love singing 
birds, and gleaming stubble, and flowing rivers, and morning 
and evening, and summer and winter, I love thee, my Friend. 

But all that can be said of Friendship, is like botany to 
flowers. How can the understanding take account of its 
friendliness ? 

Even the death of Friends will inspire us as much as their 
lives. They will leave consolation to the mourners, as the 
rich leave money to defray the expenses of their funerals, 
and their memories will be incrusted over with sublime and 
pleasing thoughts, as their monuments are overgrown with 
moss. 

This to our cis-Alpine and cis-Atlantic Friends. 

Also this other word of entreaty and advice to the large 
and respectable nation of Acquaintances, beyond the moun- 
tains ; — Greeting. 

My most serene and irresponsible neighbors, let us see 
that we have the whole advantage of each other ; we will be 
useful, at least, if not admirable, to one another. I know 
that the mountains which separate us are high, and covered 
with perpetual snow, but despair not. Improve the serene 
winter weather to scale them. If need be, soften the rocks 
with vinegar. For here lie the verdant plains of Italy ready 
to receive you. Nor shall I be slow on my side to penetrate 
to your Provence. Strike then boldly at head or heart or 
any vital part. Depend upon it the timber is well seasoned 
and tough, and will bear rough usage ; and if it should crack, 



212 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

there ls plenty more where it came from. I am no piece of 
crockery that cannot be jostled against my neighbor without 
danger of being broken by the colhsion, and must needs ring 
false and jarringly to the end of my days, when once I am 
cracked ; but rather one of the old fashioned wooden trenchers, 
which one while stands at the head of the table, and at another 
is a milking-stool, and at another a seat for children, and 
finally goes down to its grave not unadorned with honorable 
scars, and does not die till it is worn out. Nothing can shock 
a brave man but dulness. Tliink how many rebuffs every 
man has experienced in his day; perhaps has fallen into a 
horse-pond, eaten fresh-water clams, or worn one shirt for a 
week without washing. Indeed, you cannot receive a shock 
unless you have an electric affinity for that which shocks you. 
Use me, then, for I am useful in my way, and stand as one 
of many petitioners, from toadstool and henbane up to 
dahha and violet, supphcating to be put to my use, if by 
any means ye may find me serviceable ; whether for a medi- 
cated drink or bath, as balm and lavender ; or for fragrance, 
as verbena and geranium; or for sight, as cactus; or for 
thoughts, as pansy. — These humbler, at least, if not those 
higher uses. 

Ah my dear Strangers and Enemies, I would not forget 
you. I can well afford to welcome you. Let me subscribe 
myself Yours ever and truly — your much obUged servant. 
We have nothing to fear from our foes ; God keeps a stand- 
ing army for that service ; but we have no ally against our 
Friends, those ruthless Vandals. 

Once more to one and all, 

"Friends, Romans, Countrymen, and Lovers." 

Let such pure hate still underprop 
Our love, that we may be 
Each other's conscience, 
And have our sympathy 
Mainly from thence. 

We'll one another treat Hke gods, 
And all the faith we have 
In virtue and in truth, bestow 
On either, and suspicion leave 
To gods below. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 213 

Two solitary stars — 
Unmeasured systems far 
Between us roll, 

But by our conscious light we are 
Determined to one pole. 

What need confound the sphere ? — 

Love can afford to wait, 

For it no hour 's too late 

That witnesseth one duty's end, 

Or to another doth beginning lend. 

It will subserve no use, 
More than the tints of flowers, 
Only the independent guest 
Frequents its bowers. 
Inherits its bequest. 

No speech though kind has it, 
But kinder silence doles 
Unto its mates, 
By night consoles. 
By day congratulates. 

What saith the tongue to tongue? 
What heareth ear of ear? 
By the decrees of fate 
From year to year, 
Does it communicate. 

Pathless the gulf of feeling yawns — 
No trivial bridge of words. 
Or arch of boldest span. 
Can leap the moat that girds 
The sincere man. 

No show of bolts and bars 
Can keep the foeman out. 
Or 'scape his secret mine 
Who entered with the doubt 
That drew the line. 

No warder at the gate 
Can let the friendly in, 
But, like the sun, o'er all 
He will the castle win, 
And shine along the wall. 



214 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

There's nothing in the world I know 
That can escape from love, 
For every depth it goes below, 
And every height above. 

It waits as waits the sky, 
Until the clouds go by, 
Yet shines serenely on 
With an eternal day, 
Alike when they are gone. 
And when they stay. 

Implacable is Love, — 
Foes may be bought or teazed 
From their hostile intent, 
But he goes unappeased 
Who is on kindness bent. 

Having rowed five or six miles above Amoskeag before sun- 
set, and reached a pleasant part of the river, one of us landed 
to look for a farmhouse, where we might replenish our stores, 
while the other remained cruising about the stream, and 
exploring the opposite shores to find a suitable harbor for 
the night. In the meanwhile the canal boats began to come 
round a point in our rear, poling their way along close to 
the shore, the breeze having quite died away. This time 
there was no offer of assistance, but one of the boatmen only 
called out to say, as the truest revenge for having been the 
losers in the race, that he had seen a wood-duck, which 
we had scared up, sitting on a tall white-pine, half a mile 
down stream; and he repeated the assertion several times, 
and seemed really chagrined at the apparent suspicion with 
which this information was received. But there sat the 
summer duck still undisturbed by us. 

By and by the other voyageur returned from his inland 
expedition, bringing one of the natives with him, a little 
flaxen-headed boy, with some tradition, or small edition, of 
Robinson Crusoe in his head, who had been charmed by the 
account of our adventures, and asked his father's leave to 
join us. He examined, at first from the top of the bank, 
our boat and furniture, with sparkling eyes, and wished 
hirnself already his own man. He was a lively and inter- 
esting boy, and we should have been glad to ship him; 
but Nathan was still his father's boy, and had not come to 
years of discretion. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 215 

We had got a loaf of home-made bread, and musk and 
water-melons for dessert. For this farmer, a clever and 
well-disposed man, cultivated a large patch of melons for the 
Hooksett and Concord markets. He hospitably enter- 
tained us the next day, exhibiting his hop-fields and kiln 
and melon patch, warning us to step over the tight rope 
which surrounded the latter at a foot from the ground, 
while he pointed to a little bower at the corner, where it 
connected with the lock of a gun ranging with the line, and 
where, as he informed us, he sometimes sat in pleasant 
nights to defend his premises against thieves. We stepped 
high over the line, and sympathized with our host's, on the 
whole quite human, if not humane, interest in the success 
of his experiment. That night especially thieves were to 
be expected, from rumors in the atmosphere, and the priming 
was not wet. He was a Methodist man, who had his dwelling 
between the river and Uncannunuc Mountain; who there 
belonged, and stayed at home there, and by the encourage- 
ment of distant political organizations, and by his own 
tenacity, held a property in his melons, and continued to 
plant. We suggested melon seeds of new varieties and fruit 
of foreign flavor to be added to his stock. We had come 
away up here among the hills to learn the impartial and 
unbribable beneficence of Nature. Strawberries and melons 
grow as well in one man's garden as another's, and the sun 
lodges as kindly under his hill-side, — when we had imagined 
that she inclined rather to some few earnest and faithful souls 
whom we know. 

We found a convenient harbor for our boat on the opposite 
or east shore, still in Hooksett, at the mouth of a small brook 
which emptied into the Merrimack, where it would be out 
of the way of any passing boat in the night, — for they 
commonly hug the shore if bound up stream, either to avoid 
the current, or touch the bottom with their poles, — and 
where it would be accessible without stepping on the clayey 
shore. We set one of our largest melons to cool in the still 
water among the alders at the mouth of this creek, but when 
our tent was pitched and ready, and we went to get it, it had 
floated out into the stream and was nowhere to be seen. So 
taking the boat in the twilight, we went in pursuit of this 
property, and at length, after long straining of the eyes, its 
green disk was discovered far do\\m the river, gently floating 



216 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

seaward with many twigs and leaves from the mountains 
that evening, and so perfectly balanced that it had not 
keeled at all, and no water had run in at the tap which had 
been taken out to hasten its cooling. 

As we sat on the bank eating our supper, the clear light 
of the western sky fell on the eastern trees and was reflected 
in the water, and we enjoyed so serene an evening as left 
nothing to describe. For the most part we think that there 
are few degrees of sublimity, and that the highest is but little 
higher than that which we now behold ; but we are always 
deceived. Sublimer visions appear, and the former pale 
and fade away. We are grateful when we are reminded 
by interior evidence, of the permanence of universal laws ; 
for our faith is but faintly remembered, indeed, is not a 
remembered assurance, but a use and enjoyment of knowl- 
edge. It is when we do not have to believe, but come into 
actual contact with Truth, and are related to her in the most 
direct and intimate way. Waves of serener life pass over 
us from time to time, like flakes of sunlight over the fields 
in cloudy weather. In some happier moment, when more 
sap flows in the withered stalk of our life, Syria and India 
stretch away from our present as they do in history. All 
the events which make the annals of the nations are but the 
shadows of our private experiences. Suddenly and silently 
the eras which we call history awake and glimmer in us, 
and there is room for Alexander and Hannibal to march 
and conquer. In other words, the history which we read 
is only a fainter memory of events which have happened 
in our own experience. Tradition is a more interrupted 
and feebler memory. 

This world is but canvass to our imaginations. I see men 
with infinite pains endeavoring to realize to their bodies, 
what I, with at least equal pains, would realize to my imagi- 
nation, — its capacities ; for certainly there is a life of the 
mind above the wants of the body and independent of it. 
Often the body is warmed, but the imagination is torpid; 
the body is fat, but the imagination is lean and shrunk. 
But what avails all other wealth if this is wanting? *' Imagi- 
nation is the air of mind," in which it hves and breathes. 
All things are as I am. Where is the House of Change? 
The past is only so heroic as we see it. It is the canvass on 
which our idea of heroism is painted, and so, in one sense, 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 217 

the dim prospectus of our future field. Our circumstances 
answer to our expectations and the demand of our natures. 
I have noticed that if a man thinks that he needs a thousand 
dollars, and cannot be convinced that he does not, he will 
commonly be found to have them, if he lives and thinks 
a thousand dollars will be forthcoming, though it be to buy 
shoe strings with. A thousand mills will be just as slow 
to come to one who finds it equally hard to convince himself 
that he needs them. 

Men are by birth equal in this, that given 
Themselves and their condition, they are even. 

I am astonished at the singular pertinacity and endurance 
of our lives. The miracle is, that what is is, when it is so 
difficult, if not impossible, for anything else to be ; that we 
walk on in our particular paths so far, before we fall on 
death and fate, merely because we must walk in some path ; 
that every man can get a living, and so few can do any 
more. So much only can I accomplish ere health and 
strength are gone, and yet this suffices. The bird now sits 
just out of gunshot. I am never rich in money, and I am 
never meanly poor. If debts are incurred, why, debts are 
in the course of events cancelled, as it were by the same 
law by which they were incurred. I heard that an engage- 
ment was entered into between a certain youth and a maiden, 
and then I heard that it was broken off, but I did not know 
the reason in either case. We are hedged about, we think, 
by accident and circumstance, now we creep as in a dream, 
and now again we run, as if there were a fate in it and all 
things thwarted or assisted. I cannot change my clothes 
but when I do, and yet I do change them, and soil the new 
ones. It is wonderful that this gets done, when some ad- 
mirable deeds which I could mention do not get done. Our 
particular lives seem of such fortune and confident strength 
and durability as piers of solid rock thrown forward into 
the tide of circumstance. When every other path would 
fail, with singular and unerring confidence we advance on 
our particular course. What risks we run! famine and 
fire and pestilence, and the thousand forms of a cruel fate, — 
and yet every man lives till he — dies. How did he manage 
that? Is there no immediate danger? We wonder super- 
fluously when we hear of a somnambulist walking a plank 



218 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

securely, — we have walked a plank all our lives up to this 
particular string-piece where we are. My life will wait for 
nobody, but is being matured still without delay, while 
I go about the streets and chaffer with this man and that 
to secure a living. It is as indifferent and easy meanwhile 
as a poor man's dog, and making acquaintance with its kind. 
It will cut its own channel like a mountain stream, and by 
the longest ridge is not kept from the sea at last. I have 
found all things thus far, persons and inanimate matter, 
elements and seasons, strangely adapted to my resources. 
No matter what imprudent haste in my career; I am per- 
mitted to be rash. Gulfs are bridged in a twinkling, as 
if some unseen baggage train carried pontoons for my con- 
venience, and while from the heights I scan the tempting 
but unexplored Pacific Ocean of Futurity, the ship is being 
carried over the mountains piecemeal on the backs of mules 
and llamas, whose keel shall plow its waves and bear me to the 
Indies. Day would not dawn if it were not for , 

THE INWARD MORNING 

Packed in my mind lie all the clothes 

Which outward nature wears, 
And in its fashion's hourly change 

It all things else repairs. 

In vain I look for change abroad, 

And can no difference find, 
Till some new ray of peace uncalled 

Illumes my inmost mind. 

What is it gilds the trees and clouds. 

And paints the heavens so gay, 
But yonder fast abiding light 

With its unchanging ray ? 

Lo, when the sun streams through the wood. 

Upon a winter's morn, 
Where'er his silent beams intrude 

The murky night is gone. 

How could the patient pine have known 

The morning breeze would come. 
Or humble flowers anticipate 

The insect's noonday hum, — 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 219 

Till the new light with morning cheer 
From far streamed through the aisles, 

And nimbly told the forest trees 
For many stretching miles ? 

I've heard within my inmost soul 

Such cheerful morning news, 
In the horizon of my mind 

Have seen such orient hues, 

As in the twilight of the dawn. 

When the first birds awake, 
Are heard within some silent wood, 

Where they the small twigs break, 

Or in the eastern skies are seen, 

Before the sun appears. 
The harbingers of summer heats 

Which froln afar he bears. 

Whole weeks and months of my summer life slide away in 
thin volumes like mist and smoke, till at length, some warm 
morning, perchance, I see a sheet of mist blown down the 
brook to the swamp, and I float as high above the fields 
with it. I can recall to mind the stillest summer hours, 
in which the grasshopper sings over the mulleins, and there 
is a valor in that time the bare memory of which is armor 
that can laugh at any blow of fortune. For our lifetime the 
strains of a harp are heard to swell and die alternately, 
and death is but " the pause when the blast is recollecting 
itself." 

We lay awake a long while, listening to the murmurs of 
the brook, in the angle formed by whose bank with the river 
our tent was pitched, and there was a sort of human interest 
in its story, which ceases not in freshet or in drought the 
livelong summer, and the profounder lapse of the river was 
quite drowned by its din. But the rill, whose 

"Silver sands and pebbles sing 
Eternal ditties with the spring," 

is silenced by the first frosts of winter, while mightier streams, 
on whose bottom the sun never shines, clogged with sunken 
rocks and the ruins of forests, from whose surface comes up 



220 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

no murmur, are strangers to the icy fetters which bind fast 
a thousand contributary rills. 

I dreamed this night of an event which had occurred long 
before. It was a difference with a Friend, which had not 
ceased to give me pain, though I had no cause to blame my- 
self. But in my dream ideal justice w^as at length done me 
for his suspicions, and I received that compensation which 
I had never obtained in my waking hours. I was unspeak- 
ably soothed and rejoiced, even after I awoke, because in 
dreams we never deceive ourselves, nor are deceived, and 
this seemed to have the authority of a final judgment. 

We bless and curse ourselves. Some dreams are divine, 
as well as some waking thoughts. Donne sings of one 

"Who dreamt devoutlier than most use to pray." 

Dreams are the touchstones of our characters. We are 
scarcely less afflicted when we remember some unworthiness 
in our conduct in a dream, than if it had been actual, and the 
intensity of our grief, which is our atonement, measures 
inversely the degree by which this is separated from an actual 
unworthiness. For in dreams we but act a part which must 
have been learned and rehearsed in our waking hours, and 
no doubt could discover some waking consent thereto. If 
this meanness has not its foundation in us, why are we 
grieved at it? In dreams we see ourselves naked and acting 
out our real characters, even more clearly than we see others 
awake. But an unwavering and commanding virtue would 
compel even its most fantastic and faintest dreams to respect 
its ever wakeful authority; as we are accustomed to say 
carelessly, we should never have dreamed of such a thing. 
Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake. 

"And, more to lull him in his slumber soft, 
A trickling streame from high rock tumbling downe, 
And ever-drizzling raine upon the loft, 
Mixt with a murmuring winde, much like the sowne 
Of swarming bees, did cast him in a swowne. 
No other noyse, nor people's troublous cryes, 
As still are wont t' annoy the walled towne, 
Might there be heard ; but careless Quiet lyes 
Wrapt in eternall silence farre from enemy es." 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 221 



THURSDAY 

■ He trode the unplanted forest floor, whereon 
The all-seeing sun for ages hath not shone, 
Where feeds the moose, and walks the surly bear, 
And up the tall mast runs the woodpecker. 



Where darkness found him he lay glad at night ; 
There the red morning touched him with its hght. 



Go where he will, the wise man is at home, 
His hearth the earth, — his hall the azure dome ; 
Where his clear spirit leads him, there's his road, 
By God's own light illumined and foreshowed," 

— Emerson. 

When we awoke this morning, we heard the faint deliberate 
and ominous sound of rain drops on our cotton roof. The 
rain had pattered all night, and now the whole country wept, 
the drops falling in the river, and on the alders, and in the 
pastures, and instead of any bow in the heavens, there was 
the trill of the tree-sparrow all the morning. The cheery 
faith of this little bird atoned for the silence of the whole 
woodland quire besides. When we first stepped abroad, 
a flock of sheep, led by their rams, came rushing down a 
ravine in our rear, with heedless haste and unreserved frisk- 
ing, as if unobserved by man, from some higher pasture 
where they had spent the night, to* taste the herbage by the 
river-side ; but w^hen their leaders caught sight of our white 
tent through the mist, struck with sudden astonishment, 
with their fore feet braced, they sustained the rushing torrent 
in their rear, and the whole flock stood still, endeavoring 
to solve the mystery in their sheepish brains. At length, 
concluding that it boded no mischief to them, they spread 
themselves out quietly over the field. We learned after- 
ward that we had pitched our tent on the very spot which 
a few summers before had been occupied by a party of 
Penobscots. We could see rising before us through the 
mist a dark conical eminence called Hooksett Pinnacle, 
a landmark to boatmen, and also Uncannunuc Mountain, 
broad off on the west side of the river. 



222 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

This was the limit of our voyage, for a few hours more 
in the rain would have taken us to the last of the locks, and 
our boat was too heavy to be dragged around the long and 
numerous rapids w^hich would occur. On foot, however, 
we continued up along the bank, feeling our way with a 
stick through the showery and foggy day, and climbing over 
the slippery logs in our path with as much pleasure and 
buoyancy as in brightest sunshine; scenting the fragrance 
of the pines and the wet clay under our feet, and cheered 
by the tones of invisible waterfalls; with visions of toad- 
stools, and wandering frogs, and festoons of moss hanging 
from the spruce trees, and thrushes fhtting silent under the 
leaves ; our road still holding together through that wettest 
of weather, like faith, while we confidently followed its lead. 
We managed to keep our thoughts dry, however, and only 
our clothes were wet. It was altogether a cloudy and driz- 
zling day, with occasional brightenings in the mist, when 
the trill of the tree-sparrow seemed to be ushering in sunny 
hours. 

" Nothing that naturally happens to man, can hurt him, 
earthquakes and thunder storms not excepted," said a man 
of genius, who at this time lived a few miles further on our 
road. When compelled by a shower to take shelter under 
a tree, we may improve that opportunity for a more minute 
inspection of some of Nature's works. I have stood under 
a tree in the woods half a day at a time, during a heavy rain 
in the summer, and yet employed myself happily and profit- 
ably there prying with microscopic eye into the crevices 
of the bark or the leaves or the fungi at my feet. " Riches 
are the attendants of the miser : and the heavens rain plente- 
ously upon the mountains." I can fancy that it would be 
a luxury to stand up to one's chin in some retired swamp 
a whole summer day, scenting the wild honeysuckle and 
bilberry blows, and lulled by the minstrelsy of gnats and 
mosquitoes! A day passed in the society of those Greek 
sages, such as described in the Banquet of Xenophon, would 
not be comparable with the dry wet of decayed cranberry 
vines, and the fresh Attic salt of the moss-beds. Say twelve 
hours of genial and familiar converse with the leopard frog ; 
the sun to rise behind alder and dogwood, and climb buoy- 
antly to his meridian of two hands' breadth, and finally sink 
to rest behind some bold western hummock. To hear the 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 223 

evening chant of the mosquito from a thousand green chapels, 
and the bittern begin to boom from some concealed fort 
like a sunset gun ! — Surely one may as profitably be soaked 
in the juices of swamp for one day as pick his way dry-shod 
over sand. Cold and damp, — are they not as rich experi- 
ence as warmth and dryness? 

At present, the drops come trickling down the stubble 
while we lie drenched on a bed of withered wild oats, by the 
side of a bushy hill, and the gathering in of the clouds, with 
the last rush and dying breath of the wind, and then the 
regular dripping of twigs and leaves the country over, en- 
hance the sense of inward comfort and sociableness. The 
birds draw closer and are more familiar under the thick 
foliage, seemingly composing new strains upon their roosts 
against the sunshine. What were the amusements of the 
drawing room and the library in comparison, if we had them 
here? We should stiU sing as of old, — 

My books I'd fain cast off, I cannot read, 
'Twixt every page my thoughts go stray at large 
Down in the meadow, where is richer feed, 
And will not mind to hit their proper targe. 

Plutarch was good, and so was Homer too, 
Our Shaksp)eare's life was rich to live again ; 
What Plutarch read, that was not good nor true. 
Nor Shakspeare's books, unless his books were men. 

Here while I lie beneath this walnut bough, 
What care I for the Greeks or for Troy town. 
If juster battles are enacted now 
Between the ants upon this hummock's crown? 

Bid Homer wait till I the issue learn, 
If red or black the gods will favor most, 
Or yonder Ajax wiU the phalanx turn, 
Struggling to heave some rock against the host. 

Tell Shakspeare to attend some leisure hour, 
For now I've business with this drop of dew. 
And see you not, the clouds prepare a shower, — 
I'll meet him shortly when the sky is blue. 

This bed of herd's-grass and wild oats was spread 
Last year with nicer skiU than monarchs use, 
A clover tuft is pillow for my head, 
And violets quite overtop my shoes. 



224 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

And now the cordial clouds have shut all in, 
And gently swells the wind to say all's well, 
The scattered drops are falling fast and thin, 
Some in the pool, some in the flower-bell. 

I am well drenched upon my bed of oats ; 
But see that globe come rolling down its stem, 
Now like a lonely planet there it floats. 
And now it sinks into my garment's hem. 

Drip, drip the trees for all the country round, 
And richness rare distills from every bough. 
The wind alone it is makes every sound. 
Shaking down crystals on the leaves below. 

For shame the sun will never show himself. 
Who could not with his beams e'er melt me so, 
My dripping locks — they would become an elf, 
Who in a beaded coat does gaily go. 

The Pinnacle is a small wooded hill which rises very 
abruptly to the height of about two hundred feet, near the 
shore at Hooksett Falls. As Uncannunuc Mountain is 
perhaps the best point from which to view the valley of the 
Merrimack, so this hill affords the best view of the river 
itself. I have sat upon its summit, a precipitous rock only 
a few rods long, in fairer weather, when the sun was setting 
and filling the river- valley with a flood of light. You can 
see up and down the Merrimack several miles each way. 
The broad and straight river, full of light and life, with its 
sparkling and foaming falls, the islet which divides the 
stream, the village of Hooksett on the shore almost directly 
under your feet, so near that you can converse with its 
inhabitants or throw a stone into its yards, the woodland 
lake at its western base, and the mountains in the north 
and north-east, make a scene of rare beauty and complete- 
ness, which the traveller should take pains to behold. 

We were hospitably entertained in Concord in New Hamp- 
shire, which we persisted in calling New Concord, as we had 
been wont, to distinguish it from our native town, from 
which we had been told that it was named and in part 
originally settled. This would have been the proper place 
to conclude our voyage, uniting Concord with Concord by 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 225 

these meandering rivers, but our boat was moored some 
miles below its port. 

The richness of the intervals at Penacook, now Concord 
in New Hampshire, had been observed by explorers, and, 
according to the historian of Haverhill, in the " year 1726, 
considerable progress was made in the settlement, and a road 
was cut through the wilderness from Haverhill to Penacook. 
In the fall of 1727, the first family, that of Capt. Ebenezer 
Eastman, moved into the place. His team was driven by 
Jacob Shute, who was by birth a Frenchman, and he is said 
to have been the first person who drove a team through 
the wilderness. Soon after, says tradition, one Ayer, a lad 
of 18, drove a team consisting of ten yoke of oxen to Pena- 
cook, swam the river, and plowed a portion of the interval. 
He is supposed to have been the first person who plowed land 
in that place. After he had completed his work, he started 
on his return at sunrise, drowned a yoke of oxen while recross- 
ing the river, and arrived at Haverhill about midnight. 
The crank of the first saw-mill was manufactured in Haver- 
hill, and carried to Penacook on a horse." 

But we found that the frontiers were not this way any 
longer. This generation has come into the world fatally 
late for some enterprises. Go where we will on the surface 
of things, men have been there before us. We cannot now 
have the pleasure of erecting the last house ; that was long 
ago set up in the suburbs of Astoria city, and our boundaries 
have literally been run to the South Sea, according to the 
old patents. But the lives of men, though more extended 
laterally in their range, are still as shallow as ever. Un- 
doubtedly, as a western orator said, " men generally live 
over about the same surface; some live long and narrow, 
and others live broad and short ; " but it is all superficial 
living. A worm is as good a traveller as a grasshopper or 
a cricket, and a much wiser settler. With all their activity 
these do not hop away from drought nor forward to summer. 
We do not avoid evil by fleeing before it, but by rising above 
or diving below its plane; as the worm escapes drought 
and frost by boring a few inches deeper. The frontiers 
are not east or west, north or south, but wherever a man 
jronts a fact, though that fact be his neighbor, there is an 
unsettled wilderness between him and Canada, between 
him and the setting sun, or, further still, between him and it. 



226 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

Let him build himself a log-house with the bark on where he 
is, fronting it, and wage there an Old French war for seven 
or seventy years, with Indians and Rangers, or whatever 
else may come between him and the reality, and save his scalp 
if he can. 

We now no longer sailed or floated on the river, but trod 
the unyielding land like pilgrims. Sadi tells who may travel ; 
among others, — "A common mechanic, who can earn a 
subsistence by the industry of his hand, and shall not have 
to stake his reputation for every morsel of bread, as philoso- 
phers have said." — He may travel who can subsist on the 
wild fruits and game of the most cultivated country. A man 
may travel fast enough and earn his living on the road. 
I have frequently been applied to to do work when on a 
journey; to do tinkering and repair clocks, when I had 
a knapsack on my back. A man once applied to me to go 
into a factory, stating conditions and wages, observing that 
I succeeded in shutting the window of a railroad car in 
which we were travelling, when the other passengers had 
failed. " Hast thou not heard of a Sufi, who was hammering 
some nails into the sole of his sandal ; an officer of cavalry 
took him by the sleeve, saying, come along and shoe my 
horse." Farmers have asked me to assist them in haying, 
when I was passing their fields. A man once applied to me to 
mend his umbrella, taking me for an umbrella mender, 
because, being on a journey, I carried an umbrella in my 
hand while the sun shone. Another wished to buy a tin 
cup of me, observing that I had one strapped to my belt, 
and a sauce-pan on my back. The cheapest way to travel, 
and the way to travel the furthest in the shortest distance, 
is to go afoot, carrying a dipper, a spoon, and a fish-line, 
some Indian meal, some salt, and some sugar. When you 
come to a brook or pond, you can catch fish and cook them ; 
or you can boil a hasty-pudding; or you can buy a loaf 
of bread at a farmer's house for fourpence, moisten it in the 
next brook that crosses the road, and dip into it your sugar, — 
this alone will last you a whole day; — or, if you are ac- 
customed to heartier living, you can buy a quart of milk 
for two cents, crumb your bread or cold pudding into it, and 
eat it with your own spoon out of your own dish. Any one 
of these things I mean, not all together. I have travelled 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 227 

thus some hundreds of miles without taking any meal in 
a house, sleeping on the ground when convenient, and found 
it cheaper, and in many respects more profitable, than 
staying at home. So that some have inquired why it would 
not be best to travel always. But I never thought of travel- 
ling simply as a means of getting a livelihood. A simple 
woman down in Tyngsboro', at whose house I once stopped 
to get a draught of water, when I said, recognizing the 
bucket, that I had stopped there nine years before for the 
same purpose, asked if I was not a traveller, supposing that 
I had been travelling ever since, and had now come round 
again, that travellmg was one of the professions, more or 
less p'roductive, which her husband did not follow. But 
continued travelling is far from productive. It begins with 
wearing away the soles of the shoes, and making the feet 
sore, and ere long it will wear a man clean up, after making 
his heart sore into the bargain. I have observed that the 
after-life of those who have travelled much is very pathetic. 
True and sincere travelling is no pastime, but it is as serious 
as the grave, or any other part of the human journey, and it 
requires a long probation to be broken into it. I do not 
speak of those that travel sitting, the sedentary travellers 
whose legs hang dangling the while, mere idle symbols of 
the fact, any more than when we speak of setting hens we 
mean those that sit standing, but I mean those to whom 
travelling is life for the legs. The traveller must be born 
again on the road, and earn a passport from the elements, 
the principal powers that be for him. He shall experience 
at last that old threat of his mother fulfilled, that he shall 
be skinned alive. His sores shall gradually deepen them- 
selves that they may heal inwardly, while he gives no rest 
to the sole of his foot, and at night weariness must be his 
pillow, that so he may acquire experience against his rainy 
days. — So was it with us. 

Sometimes we lodged at an inn in the woods, where trout- 
fishers from distant cities had arrived before us, and where, 
to our astonishment, the settlers dropped in at night-fall 
to have a chat and hear the news, though there was but one 
road, and no other house was visible, — as if they had come 
out of the earth. There we sometimes read old newspapers, 
who never before read new ones, and in the rustle of their 
leaves heard the dashing of the surf along the Atlantic shore. 



228 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

instead of the sough of the wind among the pines. But 
then walking had given us an appetite even for the least 
palatable and nutritious food. 

Some hard and dry book in a dead language, which you 
have found it impossible to read at home, but for which 
you have still a lingering regard, is the best to carry with 
you on a journey. At a country inn, in the barren society 
of ostlers and travellers, I could undertake the writers of 
the silver or the brazen age with confidence. Almost the last 
regular service which I performed in the cause of literature 
was to read the works of 

AULUS PERSIUS FLACCUS 

If you have imagined what a divine work is spread out 
for the poet, and approach this author too, in the hope of 
finding the field at length fairly entered on, you will hardly 
dissent from the words of the prologue, 

''Ipse semipaganus 
Ad sacra Vatum carmen afifero nostrum." 

I half pagan 
Bring my verses to the shrine of the poets. 

Here is none of the interior dignity of Virgil, nor the 
elegance and vivacity of Horace, nor will any sibyl be needed 
to remind you, that from those older Greek poets there is 
a sad descent to Persius. You can scarcely distinguish one 
harmonious sound amid this unmusical bickering with the 
follies of men. 

One sees that music has its place in thought, but hardly 
as yet in language. When the Muse arrives, we wait for 
her to remould language, and impart to it her own rhythm. 
Hitherto the verse groans and labors with its load, and goes 
not forward blithely, singing by the way. The best ode may 
be parodied, indeed is itself a parody, and has a poor and 
trivial sound, like a man stepping on the rounds of a ladder. 
Homer, and Shakspeare, and Milton, and Marvel, and 
Wordsworth, are but the rustling of leaves and crackling 
of twigs in the forest, and there is not yet the sound of any 
bird. The Muse has never lifted up her voice to sing. Most 
of all, satire will not be sung. A Juvenal or Persius do not 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 229 

marry music to their verse, but are measured fault-finders 
at best; stand but just outside the faults they condemn, 
and so are concerned rather about the monster which they 
have escaped, than the fair prospect before them. Let them 
live on an age, and they will have travelled out of his shadow 
and reach, and found other objects to ponder. 

As long as there is satire, the poet is, as it were, particeps 
criminis. One sees not but he had best let bad take care of 
itself, and have to do only with what is beyond suspicion. 
If you light on the least vestige of truth, and it is the weight 
of the whole body still which stamps the faintest trace, an 
eternity will not suffice to extol it, while no evil is so huge, 
but you grudge to bestow on it a moment of hate. Truth 
never turns to rebuke falsehood; her own straightforward- 
ness is the severest correction. Horace would not have 
written satire so well if he had not been inspired by it, as 
by a passion, and fondly cherished his vein. In his odes, 
the love always exceeds the hate, so that the severest satire 
still sings itself, and the poet is satisfied, though the folly 
be not corrected. 

A sort of necessary order in the development of Genius 
is, first, Complaint; second, Plaint; third. Love. Com- 
plaint, which is the condition of Persius, lies not in the 
province of poetry. Ere long the enjojTnent of a superior 
good would have changed his disgust into regret. We can 
never have much sympathy with the complainer ; for after 
searching nature through, we conclude that he must be 
both plaintiff and defendant too, and so had best come to 
a settlement without a hearing. He who receives an injury 
is to some extent an accomplice of the wrong doer. 

Perhaps it would be truer to say, that the highest strain 
of the muse is essentially plaintive. The saint's are still 
tears of joy. Who has ever heard the Innocent sing? 

But the divinest poem, or the life of a great man, is the 
severest satire; as impersonal as Nature herself, and like 
the sighs of her winds in the woods, which convey ever a 
slight reproof to the hearer. The greater the genius, the 
keener the edge of the satire. 

Hence we have to do only with the rare and fragmentary 
traits, which least belong to Persius, or shall we say, are 
the properest utterances of his muse; since that which he 
says best at any time is what he can best say at all times. 



230 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

The Spectators and Ramblers have not failed to cull some 
quotable sentences from this garden too, so pleasant is it to 
meet even the most familiar truth in a new dress, when, if 
our neighbor had said it, we should have passed it by as 
hackneyed. Out of these six satires, you may perhaps select 
some twenty lines, which fit so well as many thoughts, that 
they will recur to the scholar almost as readily as a natural 
image; though when translated into familiar language, 
they lose that insular emphasis, which fitted them for quo- 
tation. Such lines as the following, translation cannot 
render common-place. Contrasting the man of true religion 
with those who, with jealous privacy, would fain carry on 
a secret commerce with the gods, he says, — 

"Haud cuivis promptum est, murmurque humilesque susurros, 
ToUere de templis; et aperto vivere veto." 

It is not easy for every one to take nnurnurs and low 
Whispers out of the temples, and live with open vow. 

To the virtuous man, the imiverse is the only sanctum 
sanctorum, and the penetralia of the temple are the broad 
noon of his existence. Why should he betake himself to 
a subterranean crypt, as if it were the only holy ground in 
all the world which he had left unprofaned? The obedient 
soul would only the more discover and familiarize things, 
and escape more and more into light and air, as having 
henceforth done with secrecy, so that the universe shall not 
seem open enough for it. At length, it is neglectful even of 
that silence which is consistent with true modesty, but by its 
independence of all confidence in its disclosures, makes that 
which it imparts so private to the hearer, that it becomes the 
care of the whole world that modesty be not infringed. 

To the man who cherishes a secret in his breast, there is 
a still greater secret unexplored. Our most indifferent acts 
may be matter for secrecy, but whatever we do with the ut- 
most truthfulness and integrity, by virtue of its pureness, 
must be transparent as light. 

In the third satire, he asks, 

"Est aliquid quo tendis, et in quod dirigis arcum? 
An passim sequeris corvos, testave, lutove, 
Securus quo pes ferat, atque ex tempore vivis?" 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 231 

Is there anything to which thou tendest, and against which 

thou directest thy bow? 
Or dost thou pursue crows, at random, with pottery or clay, 
Careless whither thy feet bear thee, and live ex tempore f 

The bad sense is always a secondary one. Language 
does not appear to have justice done it, but is obviously 
cramped and narrowed in its significance, when any mean- 
ness is described. The truest construction is not put upon 
it. What may readily be fashioned into a rule of wisdom, 
is here thrown in the teeth of the sluggard, and constitutes 
the front of his oflfence. Universally, the innocent man will 
come forth from the sharpest inquisition and lecturing, the 
combined din of reproof and commendation, with a faint 
sound of eulogy in his ears. Our vices always lie in the 
direction of our virtues, and in their best estate are but 
plausible imitations of the latter. Falsehood never attains 
to the dignity of entire falseness, but is only an inferior sort 
of truth; if it were more thoroughly false, it would incur 
danger of becoming true. 

"Securus quo pes ferat, atque ex tempore vimt," 

is then the motto of a wise man. For first, as the subtle 
discernment of the language would have taught us, with all 
his negligence he is still secure ; but the sluggard, notwith- 
standing his heedlessness, is insecure. 

The life of a wise man is most of all extemporaneous, for 
he lives out of an eternity which includes all time. The 
cunning mind travels farther back than Zoroaster each 
instant, and comes quite down to the present with its revela- 
tion. The utmost thrift and industry of thinking give no 
man any stock in life ; his credit with the inner world is no 
better, his capital no larger. He must try his fortune again 
to-day as yesterday. All questions rely on the present for 
their solution. Time measures nothing but itself. The 
word that is written may be postponed, but not that on the 
lip. If this is what the occasion says, let the occasion say 
it. All the world is forward to prompt him who gets up to 
live without his creed in his pocket. 

In the fifth satire, which is the best, I find, — 

"Stat contra ratio, et secretam garrit in aurem, 
Ne hceat facere id, quod quis vitiabit agendo." 



232 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

Reason opposes, and whispers in the secret ear, 

That it is not lawful to do that which one will spoil by doing. 

Only they who do not see how anything might be better 
done, are forward to try their hand on it. Even the master 
workman must be encouraged by the reflection, that his 
awkwardness will be incompetent to do that thing harm, 
to which his skill may fail to do justice. Here is no apology 
for neglecting to do many things from a sense of our in- 
capacity, — for what deed does not fall maimed and im- 
perfect from our hands? — but only a warning to bungle 
less. 

The satires of Persius are the farthest possible from in- 
spired; evidently a chosen, not imposed subject. Perhaps 
I have given him credit for more earnestness than is apparent ; 
but it is certain, that that which alone we can call Persius, 
which is forever independent and consistent, was in earnest, 
and so sanctions the sober consideration of all. The artist 
and his work are not to be separated. The most wilfully 
foolish man cannot stand aloof from his folly, but the deed 
and the doer together make ever one sober fact. There is 
but one stage for the peasant and the actor. The buffoon 
cannot bribe you to laugh always at his grimaces; they 
shall sculpture themselves in Egyptian granite, to stand 
heavy as the pyramids on the ground of his character. 

Suns rose and set and found us still on the dank forest 
which meanders up the Pemigewasset, now more like an 
otter's or a marten's trail, or where a beaver had dragged 
his trap, than where the wheels of travel raise a dust ; where 
towns begin to serve as gores, only to hold the earth together. 
The wild pigeon sat secure above our heads, high on the dead 
limbs of naval pines, reduced to a robin's size. The very 
yards of our hostelries inclined upon the skirts of mountains, 
and, as we passed, we looked up at a steep angle at the stems 
of maples waving in the clouds. 

Far up in the country, — for we would be faithful to our 
experience, — in Thornton, perhaps, we met a soldier lad 
in the woods, going to muster in full regimentals, and holding 
the middle of ^.the road ; deep in the forest with shouldered 
musket and military step, and thoughts of war and glory 
all to himself. It was a sore trial to the youth, tougher than 
many a battle, to get by us creditably and with soldierlike 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 233 

bearing. Poor man! He actually shivered like a reed in 
his thin military pants, and by the time we had got up with 
him, all the sternness that becomes the soldier had forsaken 
his face, and he skulked past as if he were driving his father's 
sheep under a sword-proof helmet. It was too much for 
him to carry any extra armor then, who could not easily dis- 
pose of his natural arms. And for his legs, they were like 
heavy artillery in boggy places ; better to cut the traces 
and forsake them. His greaves chafed and wrestled one 
with another for want of other foes. But he did get by and 
get off with all his munitions, and lived to fight another 
day ; and I do not record this as casting any suspicion on 
his honor and real bravery in the field. 

Wandering on through notches which the streams had 
made, by the side and over the brows of hoar hills and moun- 
tains, across the stumpy, rocky, forested and bepastured 
country, we at length crossed on prostrate trees over the 
Amonoosuck, and breathed the free air of Unappropriated 
Land. Thus, in fair days as well as foul, we had traced up 
the river to which our native stream is a tributary, until 
from Merrimack it became the Pemigewasset that leaped 
by our side, and when we had passed its fountainhead, the 
Wild Amonoosuck, whose puny channel was crossed at a 
stride, guiding us toward its distant source among the moun- 
tains, and at length, without its guidance, we were enabled 
to reach the summit of Agiocochook. 

"Sweet day, so cool, so calm, so bright. 
The bridal of the earth and sky, 
Sweet dews shall weep thy fall to-night, 
For thou must die." 

— Herbert. 

When we returned to Hooksett, a week afterward, the 
melon man, in whose corn-barn we had hung our tent and 
buffaloes and other things to dry, was already picking his 
hops, with many women and children to help him. We 
bought one watermelon, the largest in his patch, to carry 
with us for ballast. It was Nathan's, which he might sell 
if he pleased, having been conveyed to him in the green state, 
and owned daily by his eyes. After due consultation with 
*' Father," the bargain was concluded, — we to buy it at a 
venture on the vine, green or ripe, our risk, and pay "what 



234 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

the gentlemen pleased." It proved to be ripe; for we had 
had honest experience in selecting this fruit. 

Finding our boat safe in its harbor, under Uncannunuc 
Mountain, with a fair wind and the current in our favor, we 
commenced our voyage at noon, sitting at our ease and 
conversing, or in silence watching for the last trace of each 
reach in the river as a bend concealed it from our view. As 
the season was further advanced, the wind now blew steadily 
from the north, and with our sail set we could occasionally 
he on our oars without loss of time. The lumbermen throw- 
ing down wood from the top of the high bank, thirty or 
forty feet above the water, that it might be sent down stream, 
paused in their work to watch our retreating sail. By this 
time, indeed, we were well known to the boatmen, and were 
hailed as the Revenue Cutter of the stream. As we sailed 
rapidly down the river, shut in between two mounds of 
earth, the sound of this timber rolled down the bank enhanced 
the silence and vastness of the noon, and we fancied that 
only the primeval echoes were awakened. The vision of a 
distant scow just heaving in sight round a headland, also 
increased by contrast the solitude. 

Through the din and desultoriness of noon, even in the 
most oriental city, is seen the fresh and primitive and savage 
nature, in which Scythians, and Ethiopians, and Indians 
dwell. What is echo, what are hght and shade, day and 
night, ocean and stars, earthquake and ecUpse, there? The 
works of man are everywhere swallowed up in the immensity 
of Nature. The JEgean Sea is but Lake Huron still to the 
Indian. Also there is all the refinement of civiUzed life in 
the woods under a sylvan garb. The wildest scenes have an 
air of domesticity and homehness even to the citizen, and 
when the flicker's cackle is heard in the clearing, he is re- 
minded that civihzation has wrought but httle change there. 
Science is welcome to the deepest recesses of the forest, for 
there too nature obeys the same old civil laws. The little 
red bug on the stump of a pine, for it the wind shifts and 
the sun breaks through the clouds. In the wildest nature, 
there is not only the material of the most cultivated life, and 
a sort of anticipation of the last result, but a greater refine- 
ment already than is ever attained by man. There is papyrus 
by the river-side, and rushes for hght, and the goose only 
flies overhead, ages before the studious are born or letters 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 235 

invented, and that literature which the former suggest, and 
even from the first have rudely served, it may be man does 
not yet use them to express. Nature is prepared to welcome 
into her scenery the finest work of human art, for she is 
herself an art so cunning that the artist never appears in 
his work. 

Art is not tame, and Nature is not wild, in the ordinary 
sense. A perfect work of man's art would also be wild or 
natural in a good sense. Man tames Nature only that he 
may at last make her more free even than he found her, 
though he may never yet have succeeded. 

With this propitious breeze, and the help of our oars, we 
soon reached the Falls of Amoskeag, and the mouth of the 
Piscataquoag, and recognized, as we swept rapidly by, many 
a fair bank and islet on which our eyes had rested in the up- 
ward passage. Our boat was Uke that which Chaucer de- 
scribes in his Dream, in which the knight took his departure 
from the island, 

'*To journey for his marriage, 
And return with such an host, 
That wedded might be least and most. * * 
Which barge was as a man's thought. 
After his pleasure to him brought, 
The queene herself accustomed aye 
In the same barge to plaj'-, 
It needed neither mast ne rother, 
I have not heard of such another. 
No master for the governaunce, 
Hie sayled by thought and pleasaunce 
Without labor east and west, 
All was one, calme or tempest." 

So we sailed this afternoon, thinking of the sajdng of Pythag- 
oras, though we had no peculiar right to remember it, — 
"It is beautiful when prosperity is present with intellect, 
and when sailing as it were with a prosperous wind, actions 
are performed looking to virtue ; just as a pilot looks to the 
motions of the stars." All the world reposes in beauty to 
him who preserves equipoise in his life, and moves serenely 
on his path without secret violence; as he who sails down 
a stream, he has only to steer, keeping his bark in the middle, 
and carry it round the falls. The ripples curled away in 



236 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

our wake, like ringlets from the head of a child, while we 
steadily held on our course, and under the bows we watched 

"The swaying soft, 
Made by the delicate wave parted in front, 
As through the gentle element we move 
Like shadows gliding through untroubled dreams." 

The forms of beauty fall naturally around the path of him 
who is in the performance of his proper work ; as the curled 
shavings drop from the plane, and borings cluster round the 
auger. Undulation is the gentlest and most ideal of motions, 
produced by one fluid falling on another. Rippling is a more 
graceful flight. From a hill-top you may detect in it the 
wings of birds endlessly repeated. The two waving lines 
which represent the flight of birds appear to have been copied 
from the ripple. 

The trees made an admirable fence to the landscape, 
skirting the horizon on every side. The single trees and the 
groves left standing on the interval, appeared naturally 
disposed, though the farmer had consulted only his con- 
venience, for he too falls into the scheme of Nature. Art 
can never match the luxury and superfluity of Nature. In 
the former all is seen; it cannot afford concealed wealth, 
and is niggardly in comparison ; but Nature, even when she 
is scant and thin outwardly, satisfies us still by the assurance 
of a certain generosity at the roots. In swamps, where there 
is only here and there an evergreen tree amid the quaking 
moss and cranberry beds, the bareness does not suggest 
poverty. The double-spruce, which I had hardly noticed 
in gardens, attracts me in such places, and now first I under- 
stand why men try to make them grow about their houses. 
But though there may be very perfect specimens in front- 
yard plots, their beauty is for the most part ineffectual there, 
for there is no such assurance of kindred wealth beneath and 
around them to make them show to advantage. As we have 
said. Nature is a greater and more perfect art, the art of 
God; though, referred to herself, she is genius, and there 
is a similarity between her operations and man's art even in 
the details and trifles. When the overhanging pine drops 
into the water, by the sun and water, and the wind rubbing 
it against the shore, its boughs are worn into fantastic shapes, 
and white and smooth, as if turned in a lathe. Man's art 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 237 

has wisely imitated those forms into which all matter is most 
incUned to run, as fohage and fruit. A hammock swung in 
a grove assumes the exact form of a canoe, broader or nar- 
rower, and higher or lower at the ends, as more or fewer 
persons are in it, and it rolls in the air with the motion of 
the body, like a canoe in the water. Our art leaves its shav- 
ings and its dust about ; her art exhibits itself even in the 
shavings and the dust which we make. She has perfected 
herself by an eternity of practice. The world is well kept ; 
no rubbish accumulates ; the morning air is clear even at this 
day, and no dust has settled on the grass. Behold how the 
evening now steals over the fields, the shadows of the trees 
creeping further and further into the meadow, and ere long 
the stars will come to bathe in these retired waters. Her 
undertakings are secure and never fail. If I were awakened 
from a deep sleep, I should know which side of the meridian 
the sun might be by the aspect of nature, and by the chirp 
of the crickets, and yet no painter can paint this difference. 
The landscape contains a thousand dials which indicate 
the natural divisions of time, the shadows of a thousand 
styles point to the hour. — 

" Not only o'er the dial's face, 

This sUent phantom day by day. 
With slow, unseen, unceasing pace, 

Steals moments, months, and years away ; 
From hoary rock and aged tree, 

From proud Palmyra's mouldering walls, 
From Teneriffe, towering o'er the sea, 

From every blade of grass it falls." 

It is almost the only game which the trees play at, this 
tit-for-tat, now this side in the sun, now that, the drama of 
the day. In deep ravines under the eastern sides of cliffs, 
Night forwardly plants her foot even at noonday, and as 
Day retreats she steps into his trenches, skulking from tree 
to tree, from fence to fence, until at last she sits in his citadel 
and draws out her forces into the plain. It may be that 
the forenoon is brighter than the afternoon, not only because 
of the greater transparency of its atmosphere, but because 
we naturally look most into the west, as forward into the 
day, and so in the forenoon see the sunny side of things, but 
in the afternoon the shadow of every tree. 



238 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

The afternoon is now far advanced, and a fresh and leisurely 
wind is blowing over the river, making long reaches of bright 
ripples. The river has done its stint, and appears not to 
flow, but he at its length reflecting the light, and the haze 
over the woods is like the inaudible panting, or rather the 
gentle perspiration of resting nature, rising from a myriad 
of pores into the attenuated atmosphere. 

On the thirty-first day of March, one hundred and forty- 
two years before this, probably about this time in the after- 
noon, there were hurriedly paddhng down this part of the 
river, between the pine woods which then fringed these banks, 
two wliite women and a boy, who had left an island at the 
mouth of the Contoocook before daybreak. They were 
shghtly clad for the season, in the English fashion, and 
handled their paddles unskilfully, but with nervous energy 
and determination, and at the bottom of their canoe lay the 
still bleeding scalps of ten of the aborigines. They were 
Hannah Dustan, and her nurse, Mary Neff, both of Haverhill, 
eighteen miles from the mouth of this river, and an English 
boy, named Samuel Lennardson, escaping from captivity 
among the Indians. On the 15th of March previous, Hannah 
Dustan had been compelled to rise from childbed, and half- 
dressed, with one foot bare, accompanied by her nurse, com- 
mence an uncertain march, in still inclement weather, through 
the snow and the wilderness. She had seen her seven elder 
children flee with their father, but knew not of their fate. 
She had seen her infant's brains dashed out against an apple 
tree, and had left her own and her neighbors' dwelUngs in 
ashes. When she reached the wigwam of her captor, situated 
on an island in the Merrimack, more than twenty miles above 
where we now are, she had been told that she and her nurse 
were soon to be taken to a distant Indian settlement, and 
there made to run the gauntlet naked. The family of this 
Indian consisted of two men, three women, and seven chil- 
dren, beside an English boy, whom she found a prisoner 
among them. Having determined to attempt her escape, 
she instructed the boy to inquire of one of the men, how he 
should despatch an enemy in the quickest manner, and take 
his scalp. "Strike 'em there," said he, placing his finger 
on his temple, and he also showed him how to take off the 
scalp. On the morning of the 31st she arose before daybreak, 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 239 

and awoke her nurse and the boy, and taking the Indians* 
tomahawks, they killed them all in their sleep, excepting one 
favorite boy, and one squaw who fled wounded with him to 
the woods. The Enghsh boy struck the Indian who had 
given him the information on the temple, as he had been 
directed. They then collected all the provision they could 
find, and took their master's tomahawk and gun, and scuttling 
all the canoes but one, commenced their fhght to Haverhill, 
distant about sixty miles by the river. But after having 
proceeded a short distance, fearing that her story would not 
be beHeved if she should escape to tell it, they returned to 
the silent wigwam, and taking off the scalps of the dead, put 
them into a bag as proofs of what they had done, and then 
retracing their steps to the shore in the twiUght, recom- 
menced their voyage. 

Early this morning this deed was performed, and now, 
perchance, these tired women and tins boy, their clothes 
stained with blood, and their minds racked with alternate 
resolution and fear, are making a hasty meal of parched corn 
and moose meat, while their canoe glides under these pine 
roots whose stumps are still standing on the bank. They 
are thinking of the dead whom they have left behind on that 
solitary isle far up the stream, and of the relentless hving 
warriors who are in pursuit. Every withered leaf which 
the winter has left seems to know their story, and in its 
rustUng to repeat it and betray them. An Indian lurks 
behind every rock and pine, and their nerves cannot bear 
the tapping of a woodpecker. Or they forget their own 
dangers and their deeds in conjecturing the fate of their 
kindred, and whether, if they escape the Indians, they shall 
find the former still alive. They do not stop to cook their 
meals upon the bank, nor land, except to carry their canoe 
about the falls. The stolen birch forgets its master and does 
them good ser^'ice, and the swollen current bears them swiftly 
along with httle need of the paddle, except to steer and keep 
them warm by exercise. For ice is floating in the river ; the 
spring is opening; the muskrat and the beaver are driven 
out of their holes b}'' the flood ; deer gaze at them from the 
bank ; a few faint-singing forest birds, perchance, fly across 
the river to the northernmost shore ; the fish-hawk sails and 
screams overhead, and geese fly over with a starthng clangor ; 
but they do not observe these things, or they speedily forget 



240 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

them. They do not smile or chat all day. Sometimes they 
pass an Indian grave surrounded by its pahng on the bank, 
or the frame of a wigwam, with a few coals left behind, or 
the withered stalks still rustling in the Indian's solitary corn- 
field on the interval. The birch stripped of its bark, or the 
charred stump where a tree has been burned down to be 
made into a canoe, these are the only traces of man, — a 
fabulous wild man to us. On either side, the primeval forest 
stretches away uninterrupted to Canada or to the "South 
Sea"; to the white man a drear and howling wilderness, 
but to the Indian a home, adapted to his nature, and cheerful 
as the smile of the Great Spirit. 

While we loiter here this autumn evening, looking for a 
spot retired enough, where we shall quietly rest to-night, 
they thus, in that chilly March evening, one hundred and 
forty-two years before us, with wind and current favoring, 
have already ghded out of sight, not to camp, as we shall, 
at night, but while two sleep one will manage the canoe, and 
the swift stream bear them onward to the settlements, it 
may be, even to old John LovewelFs house on Salmon Brook 
to-night. 

According to the historian, they escaped as by a miracle 
all roving bands of Indians, and reached their homes in safety, 
with their trophies, for which the General Court paid them 
fifty pounds. The family of Hannah Dust an all assembled 
alive once more, except the infant whose brains were dashed 
out against the apple tree, and there have been many who 
in later times have lived to say that they had eaten of the 
fruit of that apple tree. 

This seems a long while ago, and yet it happened since 
Milton wrote his Paradise Lost. But its antiquity is not the 
less great for that, for we do not regulate our historical time 
by the English standard, nor did the EngHsh by the Roman, 
nor the Roman by the Greek. "We must look a long way 
back," says Raleigh, "to find the Romans giving laws to 
nations, and their consuls bringing kings and princes bound 
in chains to Rome in triumph ; to see men go to Greece for 
wisdom, or Ophir for gold ; when now nothing remains but 
a poor paper remembrance of their former condition." — 
And yet, in one sense, not so far back as to find the Pena- 
cooks and Pawtuckets using bows and arrows and hatchets 
of stone, on the banks of the Merrimack. From this Sep- 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 241 

tember afternoon, and from between these now cultivated 
shores, those times seem more remote than the dark ages. 
On beholding an old picture of Concord, as it appeared 
but seventy-five years ago, with a fair, open prospect and a 
hght on trees and river, as if it were broad noon, I find that 
I had not thought the sun shone in those days, or that men 
lived in broad dayhght then. Still less do we imagine the 
sun shining on hill and valley during PhiHp's war, on the 
warpath of Church or Phihp, or later of Lovewell or Paugus, 
with serene summer weather, but they must have Uved and 
fought in a dim twihght or night. 

The age of the world is great enough for our imaginations, 
even according to the Mosaic account, without borrowing 
any years from the geologist. From Adam and Eve at one 
leap sheer down to the deluge, and then through the ancient 
monarchies, through Babylon and Thebes, Brahma and 
Abraham, to Greece and the Argonauts; whence we might 
start again with Orpheus and the Trojan war, the Pyramids 
and the Oljnupic games, and Homer and Athens, for our 
stages ; and after a breathing space at the building of Rome, 
continue our journey down through Odin and Christ to — 
America. It is a wearisome while. — And yet the fives of 
but sixty old women, such as five under the hill, say of a 
century each, strung together, are sufficient to reach over the 
whole ground. Taking hold of hands they would span the 
interval from Eve to my own mother. A respectable tea- 
party merely, — whose gossip would be Universal History. 
The fourth old woman from myself suckled Columbus, — 
the ninth was nurse to the Norman Conqueror, — the nine- 
teenth was the Virgin Mary, — the twenty-fourth the Cu- 
msean Sibyl, — the thirtieth was at the Trojan war and Helen 
her name, — the thirty-eighth was Queen Semiramis, — the 
sixtieth was Eve, the mother of mankind. So much for the 

— "old woman that lives under the hiU, 
And if she's not gone she lives there still." 

It will not take a very great grand-daughter of hers to be in 
at the death of Time. 

We can never safely exceed the actual facts in our narra- 
tives. Of pure invention, such as some suppose, there is 
no instance. To write a true work of fiction even, is only to 
take leisure and fiberty to describe some things more exactly 



242 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

as they are. A true account of the actual is the rarest poetry, 
for common sense always takes a hasty and superficial view. 
Though I am not much acquainted with the works of Goethe, 
I should say that it was one of his chief excellencies as a 
writer, that he is satisfied with giving an exact description of 
things as they appear to him, and their effect upon him. Most 
travellers have not self-respect enough to do this simply, 
and make objects and events stand around them as the centre, 
but still imagine more favorable positions and relations than 
the actual ones, and so we get no valuable report from them 
at all. In his Italian Travels Goethe jogs along at a snail's 
pace, but always mindful that the earth is beneath and the 
heavens are above him. His Italy is not merely the father- 
land of lazzaroni and virtuosi, and scene of splendid ruins, 
but a sohd turf-clad soil, daily shined on by the sun, and 
nightly by the moon. Even the few showers are faithfully 
recorded. He speaks as an unconcerned spectator, whose 
object is faithfully to describe what he sees, and that, for the 
most part, in the order in which he sees it. Even his re- 
flections do not interfere with his descriptions. In one place 
he speaks of himself as giving so glowing and truthful a 
description of an old tower to the peasants who had gathered 
around him, that they who had been born and brought up 
in the neighborhood must needs look over their shoulders, 
"that," to use his own words, "they might behold with 
their eyes, what I had praised to their ears" — "and I added 
nothing, not even the ivy which for centuries had decorated 
the walls." It would thus be possible for inferior minds to 
produce invaluable books, if this very moderation were not 
the evidence of superiority; for the wise are not so much 
wiser than others as respecters of their own wisdom. Some, 
poor in spirit, record plaintively only what has happened to 
them ; but others how they have happened to the universe, 
and the judgment which they have awarded to circumstances. 
Above all, he possessed a hearty good-will to all men, and 
never wrote a cross or even careless word. On one occasion 
the post-boy snivelling "Signor perdonate, questa e la mia 
patria," he confesses that "to me poor northerner came some- 
thing tear-like into the eyes." 

Goethe's whole education and life were those of the artist. 
He .lacks the unconsciousness of the poet. In his autobiog- 
raphy he describes accurately the life of the author of Wilhelm 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 243 

Meister. For as there is in that book, mingled with a rare 
and serene wisdom, a certain pettiness or exaggeration of 
trifles, wisdom appHed to produce a constrained and partial 
and merely well-bred man, — a magnifying of the theatre 
till life itself is turned into a stage, for which it is our duty 
to study our parts well, and conduct with propriety and 
precision, — so in the autobiography, the fault of his educa- 
tion is, so to speak, its artistic completeness. Nature is 
hindered, though she prevails at last in making an unusually 
catholic impression on the boy. It is the life of a city boy, 
whose toys are pictures and works of art, whose wonders 
are the theatre and kingly processions and crownings. As 
the youth studied minutely the order and the degrees in the 
imperial procession, and suffered none of its effect to be lost 
on him ; so the man aimed to secure a rank in society which 
would satisfy his notion of fitness and respectability. He was 
defrauded of much which the savage boy enjoys. Indeed he 
himself has occasion to say in this very autobiography, when 
at last he escapes into the woods without the gates, — "Thus 
much is certain, that only the undefinable, wide-expanding 
feelings of youth and of uncultivated nations are adapted 
to the sublime, which whenever it may be excited in us 
through external objects, since it is either formless, or else 
moulded into foiTns which are incomprehensible, must sur- 
round us with a grandeur which we find above our reach." 
He further says of himself, — ''I had lived among painters 
from my childhood, and had accustomed myself to look at 
objects as they did, with reference to art." And this was his 
practice to the last. He was even too well-bred to be thor- 
oughly bred. He says that he had had no intercourse with 
the lowest class of his towns-boys. The child should have 
the advantage of ignorance as well as of knowledge, and is 
fortunate if he gets his share of neglect and exposure. — 

"The laws of Nature break the rules of Art." 

The Man of Genius may at the same time be, indeed is. 
commonly, an Artist, but the two are not to be confounded. 
The Man of Genius, referred to mankind, is an originator,. 
an inspired or demonic man, who produces a perfect work 
in obedience to laws yet unexplored. The Artist is he who 
detects and applies the law from observation of the works of 
Genius, whether of man or nature. The Artisan is he who 



244 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

merely applies the rules which others have detected. There 
has been no man of pure Genius; as there has been none 
wholly destitute of Genius. 

Poetry is the mysticism of mankind. 

The expressions of the poet cannot be analyzed ; his sen- 
tence is one word, whose syllables are words. There are in- 
deed no words quite worthy to be set to his music. But 
what matter if we do not hear the words always, if we hear 
the music? 

Much verse fails of being poetry because it was not written 
exactly at the right crisis, though it may have been incon- 
ceivably near to it. It is only by a miracle that poetry is 
written at all. It is not recoverable thought, but a hue 
caught from a vaster receding thought. 

A poem is one undivided unimpeded expression fallen ripe 
into literature, and it is undividedly and unimpededly re- 
ceived by those for whom it was matured. 

If you can speak what you will never hear, — if you can 
write what you will never read, you have done rare things. 

The work we choose should be our own, 
God lets alone. 

The unconsciousness of man is the consciousness of God. 

Deep are the foundations of sincerity. Even stone walls 
have their foundation below the frost. 

What is produced by a free stroke charms us, like the forms 
of lichens and leaves. There is a certain perfection in ac- 
cident which we never consciously attain. Draw a blunt 
quill filled with ink over a sheet of paper, and fold the paper 
before the ink is dry, transversely to this line, and a delicately 
shaded and regular figure will be produced, in some respects 
more pleasing than an elaborate drawing. 

The talent of composition is very dangerous, — the strik- 
ing out the heart of life at a blow, as the Indian takes off a 
scalp. I feel as if my life had grown more outward when I 
.can express it. 

On his journey from Brenner to Verona, Goethe writes, 
'"The Tees flows now more gently, and makes in many places 
broad sands. On the land, near to the water, upon the hill- 
sides, everything is so closely planted one to another, that 
you think they must choke one another, — vineyards, maize, 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 245 

mulberry trees, apples, pears, quinces, and nuts. The dwarf 
elder throws itself vigorously over the walls. Ivy grows 
with strong stems up the rocks, and spreads itself wide over 
them, the lizard glides through the intervals, and everything 
that wanders to and fro reminds one of the loveliest pictures 
of art. The women's tufts of hair bound up, the men's 
bare breasts and light jackets, the excellent oxen which they 
drive home from market, the little asses with their loads, 
— everything forms a living, animated Heinrich Roos. 
And now that it is evening, in the mild air a few clouds rest 
upon the mountains, in the heavens more stand still than 
move, and immediately after sunset the chirping of crickets 
begins to grow more loud ; then one feels for once at home 
in the world, and not as concealed or in exile. I am con- 
tented as though I had been born and brought up here, and 
were now returning from a Greenland or whaling voyage. 
Even the dust of my Fatherland, which is often whirled about 
the wagon, and which for so long a time I had not seen, is 
greeted. The clock-and-bell jmgling of the crickets is alto- 
gether lovely, penetrating, and agreeable. It sounds bravely 
when roguish boys whistle in emulation of a field of such 
songstresses. One fancies that they really enhance one 
another. Also the evening is perfectly mild as the day." 

"If one who dwelt in the south and came hither from the 
south should hear of my rapture hereupon, he would deem 
me very childish. Alas! what I here express I have long 
known while I suffered under an unpropitious heaven, and 
now may I joyful feel this joy as an exception, which we 
should enjoy everforth as an eternal necessity of our nature." 

Thus we "sayled by thought and pleasaunce," as Chaucer 
says, and all things seemed with us to flow ; the shore itself, 
and the distant cliffs, were dissolved by the undiluted air. 
The hardest material seemed to obey the sam.e law with the 
most fluid, and so indeed in the long run it does. Trees 
were but rivers of sap and woody fibre, flowing from the 
atmosphere, and emptying into the earth by their trunks, 
as their roots flow^ed upward to the surface. And in the 
heavens there were rivers of stars, and milky ways, already 
beginning to gleam and ripple over our heads. There were 
rivers of rock on the surface of the earth, and rivers of ore 
in its bowels, and our thoughts flowed and circulated, and 



246 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

this portion of time was but the current hour. Let us wander 
where we will, the universe is built round about us, and we 
are central still. If we look into the heavens they are con- 
cave, and if we were to look into a gulf as bottomless, it 
would be concave also. The sky is curved downward to 
the earth in the horizon, because we stand on the plain. I 
draw down its skirts. The stars so low there seem loath to 
depart, but by a circuitous path to be remembering me, and 
returning on their steps. 

We had already passed by broad daylight the scene of 
our encampment at Coos Falls, and at length we pitched our 
camp on the west bank, in the northern part of Merrimack, 
nearly opposite to the large island on which we had spent 
the noon in our way up the river. 

There we went to bed that summer evening, on a sloping 
shelf in the bank, a couple of rods from our boat, which was 
drawn up on the sand, and just behind a thin fringe of oaks 
which bordered the river; mthout having disturbed any 
inhabitants but the spiders in the grass, which came out by 
the light of our lamp and crawled over our buffaloes. When 
we looked out from under the tent, the trees were seen dimly 
through the mist, and a cool dew hung upon the grass, which 
seemed to rejoice in the night, and with the damp air we in- 
haled a solid fragrance. Having eaten our supper of hot 
cocoa and bread and watermelon, we soon grew weary of 
conversing and writing in our journals, and putting out the 
lantern which hung from the tent pole, fell asleep. 

Unfortunately many things have been omitted which 
should have been recorded in our journal, for though we made 
it a rule to set dowm all our experiences therein, yet such a 
resolution is very hard to keep, for the important experience 
rarely allows us to remember such obligations, and so in- 
different things get recorded, while that is frequently neg- 
lected. It is not easy to write in a journal what interests 
us at any time, because to write it is not what interests us. 

Whenever we awoke in the night, still eking out our dreams 
with half-awakened thoughts, it was not till after an interval, 
when the wind breathed harder than usual, flapping the cur- 
tains of the tent, and causing its cords to vibrate, that we 
remembered that we lay on the bank of the Merrimack, and 
not in our chamber at home. With our heads so low in the 
grass, we heard the river whirling and sucking, and lapsing 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 247 

downward, kissing the shore as it went, sometimes rippling 
louder than usual, and again its mighty current making only 
a slight limpid trickling sound, as if our water-pail had sprung 
a leak, and the water were jBiowing into the grass by our side. 
The wind, rustling the oaks and hazels, impressed us like a 
wakeful and inconsiderate person up at midnight, moving 
about and putting things to rights, occasionally stirring up 
whole drawers full of leaves at a puff. There seemed to be 
a great haste and preparation throughout Nature, as for a 
distinguished visitor; all her aisles had to be swept in the 
night, by a thousand hand-maidens, and a thousand pots 
to be boiled for the next day's feasting ; — such a whispering 
bustle, as if ten thousand fairies made their fingers fly, 
silently sewing at the new carpet with which the earth was 
to be clothed, and the new drapery which was to adorn the 
trees. And then the wind would lull and die away and we 
like it fell asleep again. 

FRIDAY 

"The Boteman stray t 
Held on his course with stayed stedfastnesse, 
Ne ever shroncke, ne ever sought to bayt 
His tryed armes for toylesome wearinesse ; 
But with his cares did sweepe the watry wildernesse." 

— Spencer. 

"Summer's robe grows 
Dusky, and like an oft-dyed garment shows." 

— Donne. 

As we lay awake long before daybreak, listening to the 
rippling of the river and the rustling of the leaves, in suspense 
whether the wind blew up or down the stream, was favorable 
or unfavorable to our voyage, we already suspected that 
there was a change in the weather, from a freshness as of 
autumn in these sounds. The wind in the woods sounded 
like an incessant waterfall dashing and roaring amid rocks, 
and we even felt encouraged by the unusual activity of the 
elements. He who hears the rippling of rivers in these 
degenerate days will not utterly despair. That night was the 
turning point in the season. We had gone to bed in summer, 
and we awoke in autumn ; for summer passes into autumn 



248 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

in some unimaginable point of time, like the turning of a 
leaf. 

We found our boat in the dawn just as we had left it, and 
as if waiting for us, there on the shore, in autumn, all cool 
and dripping with dew, and our tracks still fresh in the wet 
sand around it, the fairies all gone or concealed. Before five 
o'clock we pushed it into the fog, and leaping in, at one shove 
were out of sight of the shores, and began to sweep down- 
ward with the rushing river, keeping a sharp look out for 
rocks. We could see only the yellow gurgling water, and a 
solid bank of fog on every side forming a small yard around 
us. We soon passed the mouth of the Souhegan and the 
village of Merrimack, and as the mist gradually rolled away, 
and we were relieved from the trouble of watching for rocks, 
we saw by the flitting clouds, by the first russet tinge on the 
hills, by the rushing river, the cottages on shore, and the shore 
itself, so coolly fresh and shining with dew, and later in the 
day, by the hue of the grape vine, the goldfinch on the willow, 
the flickers flying in flocks, and when we passed near enough 
to the shore, as we fancied, by the faces of men, that the Fall 
had commenced. The cottages looked more snug and com- 
fortable, and their inhabitants were seen only for a moment, 
and then went quietly in and shut the door, retreating inward 
to the haunts of summer. 

"And now the cold autumnal dews are seen 
To cobweb ev'ry green ; 
And by the low-shorn rowens doth appear 
The fast declining year." 

We heard the sigh of the first autumnal wind, and even 
the water had acquired a grayer hue. The sumach, grape, 
and maple were already changed, and the milkweed had 
turned to a deep rich yellow. In all woods the leaves were 
fast ripening for their fall; for their full veins and lively 
gloss mark the ripe leaf, and not the sered one of the poets ; 
and we knew that the maples, stripped of their leaves among 
the earliest, would soon stand like a wreath of smoke along 
the edge of the meadow. Already the cattle were heard to 
low wildly in the pastures and along the highways, restlessly 
running to and fro, as if in apprehension of the withering of 
the grass and of the approach of winter. Our thoughts too 
began to rustle. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 249 

As I pass along the streets of our village of Concord on 
the day of our annual Cattle Show, when it usually happens 
that the leaves of the elms and buttonwoods begin first to 
strew the ground under the breath of the October wind, the 
lively spirits in their sap seem to mount as high as any plow- 
boy's let loose that day ; and they lead my thoughts away to 
the rustling woods, where the trees are preparing for their 
winter campaign. This autumnal festival, when men are 
gathered in crowds in the streets as regularly and by as natural 
a law as the leaves cluster and rustle by the wayside, is 
naturally associated in my mind with the fall of the year. 
The low of cattle in the streets sounds like a hoarse sym- 
phony or running base to the rustling of the leaves. The 
wind goes hurrying down the country, gleaning every loose 
straw that is left in the fields, while every farmer lad too 
appears to scud before it, — having donned his best pea- 
jacket and pepper-and-salt waistcoat, his unbent trousers, 
outstanding rigging of duck, or kersymere, or corduroy, and 
his furry hat withal, — to country fairs and cattle shows, to 
that Rome among the villages where the treasures of the 
year are gathered. All the land over they go leaping the 
fences with their tough idle palms, which have never learned 
to hang by their sides, amid the low of calves and the bleat- 
ing of sheep, — Amos, Abner, Elnathan, Elbridge, — 

"From steep pine-bearing mountains to the plain." 

I love these sons of earth, every mother's son of them, with 
their great hearty hearts rushing tumultuously in herds from 
spectacle to spectacle, as if fearful lest there should not be 
time between sun and sun to see them all, and the sun does 
not wait more than in haying time. 

"Wise nature's darlings, they live in the world 
Perplexing not themselves how it is hurled." 

Running hither and thither with appetite for the coarse 
pastimes of the day, now with boisterous speed at the heels 
of the inspired negro from whose larynx the melodies of all 
Congo and Guinea coast have broke loose into our streets; 
now to see the procession of a hundred yoke of oxen, all as 
august and grave as Osiris, or the droves of neat cattle and 
milch cows as unspotted as Isis or lo. Such as had no love 
for Nature 



250 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

"at all, 
Came lovers home from this great festival." 

They may bring their fattest cattle and richest fruits to the 
fair, but they are all eclipsed by the show of men. These 
are stirring autumn days, when men sweep by in crowds, 
amid the rustle fof leaves, like migrating finches ; this is the 
true harvest of the year, when the air is but the breath of 
men, and the rustling of leaves is as the trampling of the 
crowd. We read now-a-days of the ancient festivals, games, 
and processions of the Greeks and Etruscans, with a little 
incredulity, or at least with little sympathy ; but how natural 
and irrepressible in every people is some hearty and palpable 
greeting of Nature. The Corybantes, the Bacchantes, the 
rude primitive tragedians with their procession and goat- 
song, and the whole paraphernalia of the Panathensea, which 
appear so antiquated and peculiar, have their parallel now. 
The husbandman is always a better Greek than the scholar 
is prepared to appreciate, and the old custom still survives, 
while antiquarians and scholars grow gray in commemorating 
it. The farmers crowd to the fair to-day in obedience to 
the same ancient law which Solon or Lycurgus did not enact, 
as naturally as bees swarm and follow their queen. 

It is worth the while to see the country's people, how they 
pour into the town, the sober farmer folk, now all agog, 
their very shirt and coat collars pointing forward, — collars 
so broad as if they had put their shirts on wrong end upward, 
for the fashions always tend to superfluity, — and with an 
unusual springiness in their gait, jabbering earnestly to one 
another. The more supple vagabond, too, is sure to appear 
on the least rumor of such a gathering, and the next day to 
disappear, and go into his hole like the seventeen-year locust, 
in an ever shabby coat, though finer than the farmer's best, 
yet never dressed ; come to see the sport, and have a hand 
in what is going, — to know ''what's the row," if there is 
any; to be where some men are drunk, some horses race, 
some cockerels fight ; anxious to be shaking props under a 
table, and above all to see the "striped pig." He especially 
is the creature of the occasion. He empties both his pockets 
and his character into the stream, and swims in such a day. 
He dearly loves the social slush. There is no reserve of 
soberness in him. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 251 

I love to see the herd of men feeding heartily on coarse 
and succulent pleasures, as cattle on the husks and stalks of 
vegetables. Though there are many crooked and crabbed 
specimens of humanity among them, run all to thorn and rind, 
and crowded out of shape by adverse circumstances, like the 
third chestnut in the burr, so that you wonder to see some 
heads wear a whole hat, yet fear not that the race will fail 
or waiver in them ; like the crabs which grow in hedges, they 
furnish the stocks of sweet and thrifty fruits still. Thus is 
nature recruited from age to age, while the fair and palatable 
varieties die out and have their period. This is that mankind. 
How cheap must be the material of which so many are made. 

The wind blew steadily down the stream, so that we kept 
our sails set, and lost not a moment of the forenoon by de- 
lays, but from early morning until noon, were continually 
dropping downward. With our hands on the steering paddle, 
which was thrust deep into the river, or bending to the oar, 
which indeed we rarely relinquished, we felt each palpitation 
in the veins of our steed, and each impulse of the wings which 
drew us above. The current of our thoughts made as sudden 
bends as the river, which was continually opening new pros- 
pects to the east or south, but we are aware that rivers flow 
most rapidly and shallowest at these points. The steadfast 
shores never once turned aside for us, but still trended as they 
were made ; why then should we always turn aside for them ? 

A man cannot wheedle nor overawe his Genius. It re- 
quires to be concihated by nobler conduct than the world 
demands or can appreciate. These winged thoughts are like 
birds, and will not be handled; even hens will not let you 
touch them like quadrupeds. Nothing was ever so un- 
familiar and startling to a man as his own thoughts. 

To the rarest genius it is the most expensive to succumb 
and conform to the ways of the world. Genius is the worst 
of lumber, if the poet would float upon the breeze of popu- 
larity. The bird of paradise is obhged constantly to fly 
against the wind, lest its gay trappings, pressing close to its 
body, may impede its free movements. 

He is the best sailor who can steer within the fewest points 
of the wind, and exact a motive power out of the greatest 
obstacles. Most begin to veer and tack as soon as the wind 
changes from aft, and as within the tropics it does not blow 



252 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

from all points of the compass, there are some harbors which 
they can never reach. 

The poet is no tender slip of fairy stock, who requires 
peculiar institutions and edicts for his defence, but the 
toughest son of earth and of Heaven, and by his greater 
strength and endurance his fainting companions will recog- 
nize the God in liim. It is the worshippers of beauty, after 
all, who have done the real pioneer work of the world. 

The poet will prevail to be popular in spite of his faults, 
and in spite of his beauties too. He will hit the nail on the 
head, and we shall not know the shape of his hammer. He 
makes us free of his hearth and heart, which is greater than 
to offer one the freedom of a city. 

Great men, unknown to their generation, have their 
fame among the great who have preceded them, and all true 
worldly fame subsides from their high estimate beyond the 
stars. 

Orpheus does not hear the strains which issue from his 
lyre, but only those which are breathed into it ; for the 
original strain precedes the sound, by as much as the echo 
follows after ; the rest is the perquisite of the rocks and trees 
and beasts. 

When I stand in a library where is all the recorded wit of 
the world, but none of the recording, a mere accumulated, 
and not truly cumulative treasure, where inomortal works 
stand side by side with anthologies w^hich did not survive 
their month, and cobweb and mildew have already spread from 
these to the binding of those ; and happily I am reminded of 
what poetry is, I perceive that Shakspeare and Milton did 
not foresee into what company they were to fall. Alas! 
that so soon the work of a true poet should be swept into such 
a dust-hole ! 

The poet will write for his peers alone. He will remember 
only that he saw truth and beauty from his position, and 
expect the time when a vision as broad shall overlook the 
same field as freely. 

We are often prompted to speak our thoughts to our 
neighbors, or the single travellers whom we meet on the 
road, but poetry is a communication from our home and 
solitude addressed to all Intelligence. It never whispers in a 
private ear. Knowing this, we may understand those sonnets 
said to be addressed to particular persons, or "to a Mistress' 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 253 

Eyebrow." Let none feel flattered by them. For poetry 
write love, and it will be equally true. 

No doubt it is an important difference between men of 
genius or poets, and men not of genius, that the latter are 
unable to grasp and confront the thought which visits them. 
But it is because it is too faint for expression, or even con- 
scious impression. What merely quickens or retards the 
blood in their veins and fills their afternoons with pleasure 
they know not whence, conveys a distinct assurance to the 
finer organization of the poet. 

We talk of genius as if it were a mere knack, and the poet 
could only express what other men conceived. But in com- 
parison with his task the poet is the least talented of any; 
the writer of prose has more skill. See what talent the 
smith has. His material is pliant in his hands. When the 
poet is most inspired, is stimulated by an aura which never 
even colors the afternoons of common men, then his talent 
is all gone, and he is no longer a poet. The gods do not 
grant him any skill more than another. They never put 
their gifts into his hands, but they encompass and sustain 
him with their breath. 

To say that God has given a man many and great talents, 
frequently means, that he has brought his heavens down 
within reach of his hands. 

When the poetic frenzy seizes us, we run and scratch with 
our pen, intent only on worms, calhng our mates around us, 
like the cock, and delighting in the dust we make, but do not 
detect where the jewel lies, which, perhaps, we have in the 
meantime cast to a distance, or quite covered up again. 

The poet's body even is not fed simply like other men's, 
but he sometimes tastes the genuine nectar and ambrosia 
of the gods, and lives a divine life. By the healthful and 
invigorating thrills of inspiration his life is preserved to a 
serene old age. 

Some poems are for hoUdays only. They are polished and 
sweet, but it is the sweetness of sugar, and not such as toil 
gives to sour bread. The breath with which the poet utters 
his verse must be that by which he lives. 

Great prose, of equal elevation, commands our respect 
more than great verse, since it implies a more permanent 
and level height, a life more pervaded with the grandeur of 
the thought. The poet often only makes an irruption, like a 



254 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

Parthian, and is off again, shooting while he retreats; but 
the prose writer has conquered hke a Roman, and settled 
colonies. 

The true poem is not that which the public read. There 
is always a poem not printed on paper, coincident with the 
production of this, stereotyped in the poet's life. It is what 
he has become through his work. Not how is the idea expressed 
in stone, or on canvas or paper, is the question, but how far 
it has obtained form and expression in the life of the artist. 
His true work will not stand in any prince's gallery. 

My life has been the poem I would have writ, 
But I could not both live and utter it. 



THE POET'S DELAY 

In vain I see the morning rise, 
In vain observe the western blaze, 

Who idly look to other skies, 
Expecting life by other ways. 

Amidst such boundless wealth without, 

I only still am poor within, 
The birds have sung their summer out, 

But still my spring does not begin. 

Shall I then wait the autumn wind, 

Compelled to seek a milder day, 
And leave no curious nest behind, 

No woods still echoing to my lay? 

This raw and gusty day, and the creaking of the oaks and 
pines on shore, reminded us of more northern climes than 
Greece, and more wintry seas than the ^Egean. 

The genuine remains of Ossian, or those ancient poems 
which bear his name, though of less fame and extent, are, 
in many respects, of the same stamp with the Ihad itself. 
He asserts the dignity of the bard no less than Homer, and 
in his era we hear of no other priest than he. It will not 
avail to call him a heathen, because he personifies the sun 
and addresses it; and what if his heroes did ''worship the 
ghosts of their fathers," their tliin, airy, and unsubstantial 
forms? we but worship the ghosts of our fathers in more 
substantial forms. We cannot but respect the vigorous 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 255 

faith of those heathen, who sternly beheved somewhat, and 
we are incUned to say to the critics, who are offended by their 
superstitious rites, — Don't interrupt these men's prayers. 
As if we knew more about human hfe and a God, than the 
heathen and ancients! Does Enghsh theology contain the 
recent discoveries? 

Ossian reminds us of the most refined and rudest eras, 
of Homer, Pindar, Isaiah, and the American Indian. In 
his poetry, as in Homer's, only the simplest and most endur- 
ing features of humanity are seen, such essential parts of a 
man as Stonehenge exhibits of a temple ; we see the circles 
of stone, and the upright shaft alone. The phenomena of 
life acquire almost an unreal and gigantic size seen through 
his mists. Like all older and grander poetry, it is distin- 
guished by the few elements in the Hves of its heroes. They 
stand on the heath, between the stars and the earth, shrunk 
to the bones and sinews. The earth is a boundless plain for 
their deeds. They lead such a simple, dry, and everlasting 
life, as hardly needs depart with the flesh, but is transmitted 
entire from age to age. There are but few objects to distract 
their sight, and their life is as unincumbered as the course of 
the stars they gaze at. — 

"The wrathful kings, on cairns apart, 
Look forward from behind their shields, 
And mark the wandering stars, 
That brilliant westward move." 

It does not cost much for these heroes to hve ; they do not 
want much furniture. They are such forms of men only as 
can be seen afar through the mist, and have no costume nor 
dialect, but for language there is the tongue itself, and for 
costume there are always the skins of beasts and the bark 
of trees to be had. They hve out their years by the vigor 
of their constitutions. They survive storms and the spears 
of their foes, and perform a few heroic deeds, and then, 

"Mounds will answer questions of them, 
For many future years." 

Bhnd and infirm, they spend the remnant of their days Hsten- 
ing to the lays of the bards, and feehng the weapons which 
laid their enemies low, and when at length they die, by a 
convulsion of nature, the bard allows us a short and misty 



256 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

glance into futurity, yet as clear, perchance, as their lives 
had been. When MacRoine was slain, 

"His soul departed to his warlike sires, 
To follow misty forms of boars, 
In tempestuous islands bleak." 

The hero's cairn is erected, and the bard sings a brief sig- 
nificant strain, wliich will suffice for epitaph and biography. 

"The weak will find his bow in the dwelling. 
The feeble will attempt to bend it." 

Compared with this simple, fibrous hfe, our civihzed history 
appears the chronicle of debility, of fashion, and the arts of 
luxury. But the civihzed man misses no real refinement in 
the poetry of the rudest era. It reminds him that civiliza- 
tion does but dress men. It makes shoes, but it does not 
toughen the soles of the feet. It makes cloth of finer texture, 
but it does not touch the skin. Inside the civihzed man 
stands the savage still in the place of honor. We are those 
blue-eyed, yellow-haired Saxons, those slender, dark-haired 
Normans. 

The profession of the bard attracted more respect in those 
days from the importance attached to fame. It was his 
province to record the deeds of heroes. When Ossian hears 
the traditions of inferior bards, he exclaims, — 

"I straightway seize the unf utile tales, 
And send them down in faithful verse." 

His philosophy of life is expressed in the opening of the third 
Duan of Ca-Lodin. 

"Whence have sprung the things that are? 
And whither roll the passing years? 
Where does Time conceal its two heads, 
In dense impenetrable gloom, 
Its surface marked with heroes' deeds alone? 
I view the generations gone ; 
The past appears but dim ; 
As objects by the moon's faint beams. 
Reflected from a distant lake. 
I see, indeed, the thunderbolts of war. 
But there the unmighty joyless dwell, 
All those who send not down their deeds 
To far, succeeding times." 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 257 

The ignoble warriors die and are forgotten ; 

"Strangers come to build a tower, 
And throw their ashes overhand ; 
Some rusted swords appear in dust ; 
One, bending forward, says, 
' The arms belonged to heroes gone ; 
We never heard their praise in song.' " 

The grandeur of the similes is another feature which 
characterizes great poetry. Ossian seems to speak a gigantic 
and universal language. The images and pictures occupy 
even much space in the landscape, as if they could be seen 
only from the sides of mountains, and plains with a wide 
horizon, or across arms of the sea. The machinery is so 
massive that it cannot be less than natural. Oivana says to 
the spirit of her father, "Grey-haired Torkil of Torne," 
seen in the skies, 

"Thou glidest away like receding ships." 
So when the hosts of Fingal and Starne approach to battle, 

"With murmurs loud, like rivers far, 
The race of Tome hither moved." 

And when compelled to retire, 

"dragging his spear behind, 

Cudulin sank in the distant wood. 
Like a fire upblazing ere it dies." 

Nor did Fingal want a proper audience when he spoke ; 

"A thousand orators inclined 
To hear the lay of Fingal." 

The threats too would have deterred a man. Vengeance 
and terror were real. Trenmore threatens the young warrior 
whom he meets on a foreign strand, 

"Thy mother shall find thee pale on the shore, 
While lessening on the waves she spies 
The sails of him who slew her son." 

If Ossian's heroes weep, it is from excess of strength, and not 
from weakness, a sacrifice or libation of fertile natures, like 



258 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

the perspiration of stone in summer's heat. We hardly 
know that tears have been shed, and it seems as if weeping 
were proper only for babes and heroes. Their joy and their 
sorrow are made of one stuff, like rain and snow, the rainbow 
and the mist. When Fillan was worsted in fight, and ashamed 
in the presence of Fingal, 

"He strode away forthwith, 
And bent in grief above a stream. 
His cheeks bedewed with tears. 
From time to time the thistles gray 
He lopped with his inverted lance." 

Crodar, blind and old, receives Ossian, son of Fingal, who 
comes to aid him in war ; — 

"'My eyes have failed/ says he, 'Crodar is blind. 
Is thy strength like that of thy fathers? 
Stretch, Ossian, thine arm to the hoary-haired.* ' 

I gave my arm to the king. 
The aged hero seized my hand ; 
He heaved a heavy sigh ; 
Tears flowed incessant down his cheek. 
'Strong art thou, son of the mighty, 
Though not so dreadful as Morven's prince. * * * 
Let my feast be spread in the hall, 
Let every sweet-voiced minstrel sing ; 
Great is he who is within my walls. 
Sons of wave-echoing Croma.'" 

Even Ossian himself, the hero-bard, pays tribute to the 
superior strength of his father Fingal. 

"How beauteous, mighty man, was thy mind, 
Why succeeded Ossian without its strength?" 



While we sailed fleetly before the wind, with the river 
gurgling under our stern, the thoughts of autumn coursed 
as steadily through our minds, and we observed less what 
was passing on the shore, than the dateless associations and 
impressions which the season awakened, anticipating in 
some measure the progress of the year. — 

I hearing get, who had but ears, 
And sight, who had but eyes before. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 259 

I moments live, who lived but years, 
And truth discern, who knew but learning's lore. 

Sitting with our faces now up stream, we studied the land- 
scape by degrees, as one unrolls a map, — rock, tree, house, 
hill, and meadow, assuming new and varjring positions as 
wind and water shifted the scene, and there was variety enough 
for our entertainment in the metamorphoses of the simplest 
objects. Viewed from this side the scenery appeared new 
to us. 

The most famihar sheet of water viewed from a new hill- 
top, yields a novel and unexpected pleasure. When we have 
travelled a few miles, we do not recognize the profiles even 
of the hills which overlook our native village, and perhaps 
no man is quite famihar with the horizon as seen from the 
hill nearest to his house, and can recall its outhne distinctly 
when in the valley. We do not commonly know, beyond a 
short distance, wliich way the hills range which take in our 
houses and farms in their sweep. As if our birth had at 
first sundered things, and we had been thrust up through 
into nature like a wedge, and not till the wound heals and 
the scar disappears, do we begin to discover where we are, 
and that nature is one and continuous everywhere. It is 
an important epoch when a man who has always lived on 
the east side of a mountain and seen it in the west, travels 
round and sees it in the east. Yet the universe is a sphere 
whose centre is wherever there is inteUigence. The sun is 
not so central as a man. Upon an isolated hill-top, in an 
open country, we seem to ourselves to be standing on the 
boss of an immense shield, the immediate landscape being 
apparently depressed below the more remote, and rising 
gradually to the horizon, which is the rim of the shield, villas, 
steeples, forests, mountains, one above another, till they are 
swallowed up in the heavens. The most distant mountains 
appear to rise directly from the shore of that lake in the 
woods by which we chance to be standing, while from the 
mountain top, not only this, but a thousand nearer and 
larger lakes, are equally unobserved. 

Seen through this clear atmosphere, the works of the 
farmer, his plowing and reaping, had a beauty to our eyes 
which he never saw. How fortunate were we who did not 
own an acre of these shores, who had not renounced our title 



260 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

to the whole. One who knew how to appropriate the true 
value of this world would be the poorest man in it. The poor 
rich man ! all he has is what he has bought. What I see is 
mine. I am a large owner in the Merrimack intervals. — 

Men dig and dive but cannot my wealth spend, 
Who yet no partial store appropriate, 

Who no armed ship into the Indies send, 
To rob me of my orient estate. 

He is the rich man, and enjoys the fruits of riches, who sum- 
mer and winter forever can find dehght in his own thoughts. 
Buy a farm ! What have I to pay for a farm which a farmer 
will take ? 

When I visit again some haunt of my youth, I am glad to 
find that nature wears so well. The landscape is indeed 
something real, and soUd, and sincere, and I have not put 
my foot through it yet. There is a pleasant tract on the 
bank of the Concord, called Conantum, which I have in my 
mind; — the old deserted farm-house, the desolate pasture 
with its bleak chff, the open wood, the river-reach, the green 
meadow in the mist, and the moss-grown wild-apple orchard, 
— places where one may have many thoughts and not decide 
anything. It is a scene which I can not only remember, as I 
might a vision, but when I will can bodily revisit, and find it 
even so, unaccountable, yet unpretending in its pleasant 
dreariness. When my thoughts are sensible of change, I 
love to see and sit on rocks which I have known, and pry into 
their moss, and see unchangeableness so estabhshed. I not 
yet gray on rocks forever gray, I no longer green under the 
evergreens. There is something even in the lapse of time by 
which time recovers itself. 

As we have said, it proved a cool as well as breezy day, 
and by the time we reached Penichook Brook, we were 
obhged to sit muffled in our cloaks, while the wind and current 
carried us along. We boimded swiftly over the ripphng 
surface, far by many cultivated lands and the ends of fences 
which divided innumerable farms, with hardly a thought for 
the various fives which they separated ; now by long rows of 
alders or groves of pines or oaks, and now by some homestead 
where the women and children stood outside to gaze at us, 
till we had swept out of their sight, and beyond the limit of 
their longest Saturday ramble. We glided past the mouth 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 261 

of the Nashua, and not long after, of Sahnon Brook, without 
more pause than the wind. — 

Salmon Brook, 
Penichook, 
Ye sweet waters of my brain, 
When shall I look, 
Or cast the hook, 
In your waves again? 

Silver eels, 
Wooden creels, 
These the baits that still allure, 
And dragon-fly 
That floated by, — 
May they stiU endure? 

The shadows chased one another swiftly over wood and 
meadow, and their alternation harmonized with our mood. 
We could distinguish the clouds which cast each one, though 
never so high in the heavens. When a shadow flits across 
the landscape of the soul, where is the substance? Probably, 
if we were wise enough, we should see to what virtue we are 
indebted for any happier moment we enjoy. No doubt 
we have earned it at some time ; for the gifts of Heaven are 
never quite gratuitous. The constant abrasion and decay 
of our Hves makes the soil of our future growth. The wood 
which we now mature, when it becomes virgin mould, deter- 
mines the character of our second growth, whether that be 
oaks or pines. Every man casts a shadow; not his body 
only, but his imperfectly mingled spirit; this is his grief; 
let him turn which way he will, it falls opposite to the sun ; 
short at noon, long at eve. Did you never see it ? — But, 
referred to the sun, it is widest at its base, which is no greater 
than his own opacity. The divine hght is diffused almost 
entirely around us, and by means of the reflection of hght, 
or else by a certain self-luminousness, or, as some will have 
it, transparency, if we preserve ourselves untarnished, we 
are able to enhghten our shaded side. At any rate, our 
darkest grief has that bronze color of the moon echpsed. 
There is no ill which may not be dissipated, like the dark, if 
you let in a stronger light upon it. Shadows, referred to 
the source of hght, are pyramids whose bases are never greater 
than those of the substances which cast them, but hght is a 



262 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

spherical congeries of pyramids, whose very apexes are the 
sun itself, and hence the system shines with uninterrupted 
light. But if the hght we use is but a paltry and narrow 
taper, most objects will cast a shadow wider than them- 
selves. 

The places where we had stopped or spent the night in 
our way up the river, had already acquired a slight historical 
interest for us ; for many upward days' voyaging were un- 
ravelled in this rapid downward passage. When one landed 
to stretch his hmbs by walking, he soon found himself falUng 
behind his companion, and was obliged to take advantage 
of the curves, and ford the brooks and ravines in haste, to 
recover his ground. Already the banks and the distant 
meadows wore a sober and deepened tinge, for the September 
air had shorn them of their summer's pride. — 

"And what's a life? The flourishing array 
Of the proud summer meadow, which to-day 
Wears her green plush, and is to-morrow hay." 

The air was really the "fine element" which the poets de- 
scribe. It had a finer and sharper grain, seen against the 
russet pastures and meadows, than before, as if cleansed of 
the summer's impurities. 

Having passed the New Hampshire line and reached the 
Horseshoe Interval in Tyngsboro', where there is a high and 
regular second bank, we chmbed up this in haste to get a 
nearer sight of the autumnal flowers, asters, golden-rod, and 
yarrow, and the trichostema dichotoma, humble road-side 
blossoms, and, fingering still, the harebell and the rhexia 
Virginica. The last, growing in patches of fively pink 
flowers on the edge of the meadows, had almost too gay an 
appearance for the rest of the landscape, fike a pink ribbon 
on the bonnet of a Puritan woman. Asters and golden-rods 
were the fivery which nature wore at present. The latter 
alone expressed all the ripeness of the season, and shed theit 
mellow lustre over the fields, as if the now decfining sum- 
mer's sun had bequeathed its hues to them. It is the floral 
solstice a little after mid-summer, when the particles of 
golden light, the sun-dust, have, as it were, fallen like seeds 
on the earth, and produced these blossoms. On every hill- 
side, and in every valley, stood countless asters, coreopses, 
tansies, golden-rods, and the whole race of yellow flowers, 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 263 

like Brahminical devotees, turning steadily with their lumi- 
nary from morning till night. 

"I see the golden-rod shine bright, 
As sun-showers at the birth of day, 
A golden plume of yellow light, 

That robs the Day-god's splendid ray. 

"The aster's violet rays divide 

The bank with many stars for me, 
And yarrow in blanch tints is dyed. 
As moonlight floats across the sea. 

"I see the emerald woods prepare 
To shed their vestiture once more, 
And distant elm-trees spot the air 
With yellow pictures softly o'er. * * 

"No more the water-lily's pride 

In milk-white circles swims content. 
No more the blue-weed's clusters ride 
And mock the heaven's element. * * 

"Autumn, thy wreath and mine are blent 
With the same colors, for to me 
A richer sky than all is lent, 

While fades my dream-like company. 

"Our skies glow purple, but the wind 

Sobs chill through green trees and bright grass, 
To-day shines fair, and lurk behind 
The times that into winter pass. 

"So fair we seem, so cold we are. 
So fast we hasten to decay, 
Yet through our night glows many a star. 
That still shall claim its sunny day." 

So sang a Concord poet once. 

There is a peculiar interest belonging to the still later 
flowers, which abide with us the approach of winter. There 
is something witchlike in the appearance of the witch-hazel, 
which blossoms late in October and in November, with its 
irregular and angular spray and petals like furies' hair, or 
small ribbon streamers. Its blossoming, too, at this irregular 
period, when other shrubs have lost their leaves, as well as 



264 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

blossoms, looks like witches' craft. Certainly it blooms in 
no garden of man's. There is a whole fairy-land on the hill- 
side where it grows. 

Some have thought that the gales do not at present waft 
to the voyager the natural and original fragrance of the land, 
such as the early navigators described, and that the loss of 
many odoriferous native plants, sweet-scented grasses and 
medicinal herbs, wliich formerly sweetened the atmosphere, 
and rendered it salubrious, by the grazing of cattle and the 
rooting of swine, is the source of many diseases which now 
prevail ; the earth, say they, having been long subjected to 
extremely artificial and luxurious modes of cultivation, to 
gratify the appetite, converted into a stye and hot-bed, 
where men for profit increase the ordinary decay of nature. 

According to the record of an old inhabitant of Tyngsboro', 
now dead, whose farm we were now gliding past, one of the 
greatest freshets on this river took place in October, 1785, 
and its height was marked by a nail driven into an apple 
tree behind his house. One of his descendants has shown 
this to me, and I judged it to be at least seventeen or eight- 
een feet above the level of the river at the time. Before the 
Lowell and Nashua raihoad was built, the engineer made 
inquiries of the inhabitants along the banks as to how high 
they had known the river to rise. When he came to this 
house he was conducted to the apple tree, and as the nail 
was not then visible, the lady of the house placed her hand 
on the trunk where she said that she remembered the nail 
to have been from her childhood. In the meanwhile the old 
man put his arm inside the tree, which was hollow, and felt 
the point of the nail sticking through, and it was exactly 
opposite to her hand. The spot is now plainly marked by 
a notch in the bark. But as no one else remembered the 
river to have risen so high as this, the engineer disregarded 
this statement, and I learn that there has since been a freshet 
which rose within nine inches of the rails at Biscuit Brook, 
and such a freshet as that of 1785 would have covered the 
railroad two feet deep. 

The revolutions of nature tell as fine tales, and make as 
interesting revelations, on this river's banks, as on the 
Euphrates or the Nile. This apple tree, which stands within 
a few rods of the river, is called " Elisha's apple tree," from 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 265 

a friendly Indian, who was anciently in the service of Jona- 
than Tyng, and, with one other man, was killed here by his 
own race in one of the Indian wars, — the particulars of which 
affair were told us on the spot. He was buried close by, no 
one knew exactly where, but in the flood of 1785, so great 
a weight of water standing over the grave, caused the earth 
to settle where it had once been distiu-bed, and when the 
flood went down, a sunken spot, exactly of the form and size 
of the grave, revealed its locality, but this was now lost 
again, and no future flood can detect it; yet, no doubt, 
Nature will know how to point it out in due time, if it be 
necessary, by methods yet more searching and unexpected. 
Thus there is not only the crisis when the spirit ceases to 
inspire and expand the body, marked by a fresh mound in 
the church-yard, but there is also a crisis when the body 
ceases to take up room as such in nature, marked by a fainter 
depression in the earth. 

We sat awhile to rest us here upon the brink of the western 
bank, surroimded by the glossy leaves of the red variety of 
the mountain laurel, just above the head of Wicasuck Island, 
where we could observe some scows which were loading with 
clay from the opposite shore, and also overlook the grounds 
of the farmer, of whom I have spoken, who once hospitably 
entertained us for a night. He had on his pleasant farm, 
besides an abundance of the beach plum, or prunus littoraliSj 
which grew wild, the Canada plum under cultivation, fine 
Porter apples, some peaches, and large patches of musk and 
watermelons, which he cultivated for the Lowell market. 
EUsha's apple tree, too, bore a native fruit, which was prized 
by the family. He raised the blood peach, which, as he 
showed us with satisfaction, was more like the oak in the 
color of its bark and in the setting of its branches, and was 
less liable to break down under the weight of the fruit, or 
the snow, than other varieties. It was of slower growth, 
and its branches strong and tough. There, also, was his 
nursery of native apple trees, thickly set upon the bank, 
which cost but Httle care, and which he sold to the neighbor- 
ing farmers when they were five or six years old. To see 
a single peach upon its stem makes an impression of paradi- 
saical fertility and luxury. This reminds us even of an old 
Roman farm, as described by Varro : '' Caesar Vopiscus 
iEdilicius, when he pleaded before the Censors, said that 



266 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

the grounds of Rosea were the garden (sumen the tid-bit) of 
Italy, in which a pole being left would not be visible the day 
after, on accoimt of the growth of the herbage." This soil 
may not have been remarkably fertile, yet at this distance 
we thought that this anecdote might be told of the Tyngs- 
boro' farm. 

When we passed Wicasuck Island, there was a pleasure 
boat containing a youth and a maiden on the island brook, 
which we were pleased to see, since it proved that there were 
some hereabouts to whom our excursions would not be 
wholly strange. Before this, a canal-boatman, of whom 
we made some inquiries respecting Wicasuck Island, and who 
told us that it was disputed property, supposed that we had 
a claim upon it, and though we assured him that all this was 
news to us, and explained, as well as we could, why we had 
come to see it, he believed not a word of it, and seriously 
offered us one hundred dollars for our title. The only other 
small boats which we met with were used to pick up drift- 
wood. Some of the poorer class along the stream collect, 
in this way, all the fuel which they require. While one of 
us landed not far from this island to forage for provisions 
among the farm-houses whose roofs we saw, for our supply 
was now exhausted, the other, sitting in the boat, which 
was moored to the shore, was left alone to his reflections. 

If there is nothing new on the earth, still the traveller 
always has a resource in the skies. They are constantly 
turning a new page to view. The wind sets the types on 
this blue ground, and the inquiring may always read a new 
truth there. There are things there wi'itten with such fine 
and subtle tinctures, paler than the juice of limes, that to 
the diurnal eye they leave no trace, and only the chemistry 
of night reveals them. Every man's daylight firmament 
answers in his mind to the brightness of the vision in his 
starriest hour. 

These continents and hemispheres are soon run over, but 
an always unexplored and infinite region makes off on every 
side from the mind, further than to sunset, and we can make 
no highway or beaten track into it, but the grass immediately 
springs up in the path, for we travel there chiefly with our 
wings. 

Sometimes we see objects as through a thin haze, in their 
eternal relations, and they stand like Palenque and the 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 267 

Pyramids, and we wonder who set them up, and for what 
purpose. If we see the reality in things, of what moment is 
the superficial and apparent longer? What are the earth 
and all its interests beside the deep surmise which pierces 
and scatters them? While I sit here listening to the waves 
which ripple and break on this shore, I am absolved from all 
obligation to the past, and the council of nations may re- 
consider its votes. The grating of a pebble annuls them. 
Still occasionally in my dreams I remember that rippling 
water. — 

Oft, as I turn me on my pillow o'er, 
I hear the lapse of waves upon the shore, 
Distinct as if it were at broad noon-day. 
And I were drifting down from Nashua. 

With a bending sail we glided rapidly by Tyngsboro' 
and Chelmsford, each holding in one hand half of a tart 
country apple-pie which we had purchased to celebrate our 
return, and in the other a fragment of the newspaper in 
which it was wrapped, devouring these with divided relish, 
and learning the news which had transpired since we sailed. 
The river here opened into a broad and straight reach of great 
length, which we bounded merrily over before a smacking 
breeze, with a devil-may-care look in our faces, and our boat 
a white bone in its mouth, and a speed which greatly aston- 
ished some scow boatmen whom we met. The wind in the 
horizon rolled like a flood over valley and plain, and every 
tree bent to the blast, and the mountains like school-boys 
turned their cheeks to it. They were great and current 
motions, the flowing sail, the running stream, the waving 
tree, the roving wind. The north wind stepped readily into 
the harness which we had provided, and pulled us along 
with good will. Sometimes we sailed as gently and steadily 
as the clouds overhead, watching the receding shores and the 
motions of our sail; the play of its pulse so like our own 
lives, so thin and yet so full of life, so noiseless when it labored 
hardest, so noisy and impatient when least effective ; now 
bending to some generous impulse of the breeze, and then 
fluttering and flapping with a kind of human suspense. It 
was the scale on which the varying temperature of distant 
atmospheres was graduated, and it was some attraction for 
us that the breeze it played with had been out of doors so 



268 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

long. Thus we sailed, not being able to fly, but as next 
best, making a long furrow in the fields of the Merrimack 
toward our home, with our wings spread, but never lifting 
our heel from the watery trench ; gracefully plowing home- 
ward with our brisk and willing team, wind and stream, 
puUing together, the former yet a wUd steer, yoked to his 
more sedate fellow. It was very near flying, as when the 
duck rushes through the water with an impulse of her wings, 
throwing the spray about her, before she can rise. How 
we had stuck fast if drawn up but a few feet on the shore ! 

When we reached the great bend just above Middlesex, 
where the river runs east thirty-five miles to the sea, we at 
length lost the aid of this propitious wind, though we con- 
trived to make one long and judicious tack carry us nearly 
to the locks of the canal. We were here locked through at 
noon by our old friend, the lover of the higher mathematics, 
who seemed glad to see us safe back again through so many 
locks ; but we did not stop to consider any of his problems, 
though we could cheerfully have spent a whole autumn in 
this way another time, and never have asked what his religion 
was. It is so rare to meet with a man out-doors who cherishes 
a worthy thought in his mind, which is independent of the 
labor of his hands. Behind every man's busy-ness there 
should be a level of undisturbed serenity and industry, as 
within the reef encircling a coral isle there is always an 
expanse of still water, where the depositions are going on 
which will finally raise it above the surface. 

The eye which can appreciate the naked and absolute 
beauty of a scientific truth is far more rare than that which 
is attracted by a moral one. Few detect the morality in 
the former, or the science in the latter. Aristotle defined 
art to be Aoyos rov epyov avev vXrj^, the principle of the 
work without the wood; but most men prefer to have some of 
the wood along with the principle ; they demand that the 
truth be clothed in flesh and blood and the warm colors of 
life. They prefer the partial statement because it fits and 
measures them and their commodities best. But science 
still exists everywhere as the sealer of weights and measures 
at least. 

We have heard much about the poetry of mathematics, 
but very little of it has yet been sung. The ancients had 
a juster notion of their poetic value than we. The most 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 269 

distinct and beautiful statement of any truth must take at 
last the mathematical form. We might so simplify the rules 
of moral philosophy, as well as of arithmetic, that one for- 
mula would express them both. All the moral laws are 
readily translated into natural philosophy, for often we 
have only to restore the primitive meaning of the words by 
which they are expressed, or to attend to their literal instead 
of their metaphorical sense. They are already supernatural 
philosophy. The whole body of what is now called moral 
or ethical truth existed in the golden age as abstract science. 
Or, if we prefer, we may say that the laws of Nature are the 
purest morality. The Tree of Knowledge is a Tree of Knowl- 
edge of good and evil. He is not a true man of science who 
does not bring some sympathy to his studies, and expect 
to learn something by behavior as weU as by application. 
It is childish to rest in the discovery of mere coincidences, 
or of partial and extraneous laws. The study of geometry 
is a petty and idle exercise of the mind, if it is applied to no 
larger system than the starry one. Mathematics should be 
mixed not only with physics but with ethics, that is mixed 
mathematics. The fact which interests us most is the life 
of the naturalist. The purest science is still biographical. 
Nothing will dignify and elevate science while it is sundered 
so wholly from the moral life of its devotee, and he professes 
another religion than it teaches, and worships at a foreign 
shrine. Anciently the faith of a philosopher was identical 
with his system, or, in other words, his view of the universe. 

My friends mistake when they communicate facts to me 
with so much pains. Their presence, even their exaggera- 
tions and loose statements, are equally good facts for me. 
I have no respect for facts even except when I would use 
them, and for the most part I am independent of those which 
I hear, and can afford to be inaccurate, or, in other words, 
to substitute more present and pressing facts in their place. 

The poet uses the results of science and philosophy, and 
generalizes their widest deductions. 

The process of discovery is very simple. An unwearied 
and systematic application of known laws to nature, causes 
the unknown to reveal themselves. Almost any mode of 
observation will be successful at last, for what is most wanted 
is method. Only let something be determined and fixed 
around which observation may rally. How many new 



270 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

relations a foot-rule alone will reveal, and to how many 
things still this has not been applied! What wonderful 
discoveries have been, and may still be, made, with a plumb- 
line, a level, a surveyor's compass, a thermometer, or a 
barometer ! Where there is an observatory and a telescope, 
we expect that any eyes will see new worlds at once. I should 
say that the most prominent scientific men of our comitry, 
and perhaps of this age, are either serving the arts, and not 
pure science, or are performing faithful but quite subordinate 
labors in particular departments. They make no steady 
and systematic approaches to the central fact. A discovery 
is made, and at once the attention of all observers is dis- 
tracted to that, and it draws many analogous discoveries 
in its train ; as if their work were not already laid out for 
them, but they had been lying on their oars. There is want- 
ing constant and accurate observation with enough of theory 
to direct and discipline it. 

But above all, there is wanting genius. Our books of 
science, as they improve in accuracy, are in danger of losing 
the freshness and vigor and readiness to appreciate the real 
laws of Nature, which is a marked merit in the ofttimes false 
theories of the ancients. I am attracted by the slight pride 
and satisfaction, the emphatic and even exaggerated style 
in which some of the older naturalists speak of the operations 
of Nature, though they are better qualified to appreciate 
than to discriminate the facts. Their assertions are not 
without value when disproved. If they are not facts, they 
are suggestions for Nature herself to act upon. " The 
Greeks," says Gesner, '' had a common proverb (Aayws 
K6a€v8(j)v) a sleeping hare, for a dissembler or counterfeit; 
because the hare sees when she sleeps ; for this is an admirable 
and rare work of Nature, that all the residue of her bodily 
parts take their rest, but the eye standeth continually sen- 
tinel." 

Observation is so wide awake, and facts are being so rapidly 
added to the sum of human experience, that it appears as 
if the theorizer would always be in arrears, and were doomed 
forever to arrive at imperfect conclusions; but the power 
to perceive a law is equally rare in all ages of the world, and 
depends but little on the number of facts observed. The 
senses of the savage will furnish him with facts enough to 
set him up as a philosopher. The ancients can still speak 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 271 

to us with authority even on the themes of geology and 
chemistry, though these studies are thought to have had their 
birth in modern times. Much is said about the progress 
of science in these centuries. I should say that the useful 
results of science had accumulated, but that there had been 
no accumulation of knowledge, strictly speaking, for pos- 
terity; for knowledge is to be acquired only by a corre- 
sponding experience. How can we know what we are told 
merely? Each man can interpret another's experience only 
by his own. We read that Newton discovered the law of 
gravitation, but how many who have heard of his famous 
discovery have recognized the same truth that he did? It 
may be not one. The revelation which was then made to 
him has not been superseded by the revelation made to any 
successor. — 

We see the 'planet faU, 

And that is all. 

In a review of Sir James Clark Ross's Antarctic Voyage of 
Discovery, there is a passage which shows how far a body 
of men are commonly impressed by an object of sublimity, 
and which is also a good instance of the step from the sublime 
to the ridiculous. After describing the discovery of the 
Antarctic Continent, at first seen a hundred miles distant 
over fields of ice, — stupendous ranges of mountains from 
seven and eight to twelve and fourteen thousand feet high, 
covered with eternal snow and ice, in solitary and inaccessible 
grandeur, at one time the weather being beautifully clear, 
and the sun shining on the icy landscape ; a continent whose 
islands only are accessible, and these exhibited " not the 
smallest trace of vegetation," only in a few places the rocks 
protruding through their icy covering, to convince the 
beholder that land formed the nucleus, and that it was not 
an iceberg ; — the practical British reviewer proceeds thus, 
sticking to his last, " On the 22d of January, afternoon, the 
Expedition made the latitude of 74° 20', and by 7^ p. m., 
having ground to believe that they were then in a higher 
southern latitude than had been attained by that enterprising 
seaman, the late Captain James Weddel, and therefore 
higher than all their predecessors, an extra allowance of 
grog was issued to the crews as a reward for their persever- 
ance." 



272 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

Let not us sailors of late centuries take upon ourselves 
any airs on account of our Newtons and our Cuviers. We 
deserve an extra allowance of grog only. 

We endeavored in vain to persuade the wind to blow 
through the long corridor of the canal, which is here cut 
straight through the woods, and were obliged to resort to 
our old expedient of drawing by a cord. When we reached 
the Concord, we were forced to row once more in good earnest, 
with neither wind nor current in our favor, but by this time 
the rawness of the day had disappeared, and we experienced 
the warmth of a summer afternoon. This change in the 
weather was favorable to our contemplative mood, and dis- 
posed us to dream yet deeper at our oars, while we floated 
in imagination further down the stream of time, as we had 
floated down the stream of the Merrimack, to poets of a 
milder period than had engaged us in the morning. Chelms- 
ford and BiUerica appeared like old English towns, compared 
with Merrimack and Nashua, and many generations of civil 
poets might have lived and sung here. 

What a contrast between the stern and desolate poetry 
of Ossian, and that of Chaucer, and even of Shakespeare 
and Milton, much more of Dryden, and Pope, and Gray. 
Our summer of English poetry, like _ the Greek and Latin 
before it, seems well advanced toward its fall, and laden with 
the fruit and foliage of the season, with bright autumnal 
tints, but soon the winter will scatter its myriad clustering 
and shading leaves, and leave only a few desolate and fibrous 
boughs to sustain the snow and rime, and creak in the blasts 
of ages. We cannot escape the impression that the Muse 
has stooped a little in her flight, when we come to the litera- 
ture of civilized eras. Now first we hear of various ages and 
styles of poetry ; it is pastoral, and lyric, and narrative, and 
didactic ; but the poetry of runic monuments is of one style, 
and for every age. The bard has in a great measure lost 
the dignity and sacredness of his office. Formerly he was 
called a seer, but now it is thought that one man sees as much 
as another. He has no longer the bardic rage, and only 
conceives the deed, which he formerly stood ready to perform. 
Hosts of warriors earnest for battle could not mistake nor 
dispense with the ancient bard. His lays were heard in the 
pauses of the fight. There was no danger of his being over- 



J 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 273 

looked by his contemporaries. But now the hero and the 
bard are of different professions. When we come to the 
pleasant EngUsh verse, the storms have all cleared away, 
and it will never thmider and lighten more. The poet has 
come within doors, and exchanged the forest and crag for 
the fireside, the hut of the Gael, and Stonehenge with its 
circles of stones, for the house of the Englishman. No hero 
stands at the door prepared to break forth into song or heroic 
action, but a homely Englishman, who cultivates the art of 
poetry. We see the comfortable fireside, and hear the crack- 
ling fagots in all the verse. 

Notwithstanding the broad humanity of Chaucer, and the 
many social and domestic comforts which we meet with in 
his verse, we have to narrow our vision somewhat to consider 
him, as if he occupied less space in the landscape, and did 
not stretch over hill and valley as Ossian does. Yet, seen 
from the side of posterity, as the father of English poetry, 
preceded by a long silence or confusion in history, unen- 
livened by any strain of pure melody, we easily come to 
reverence him. Passing over the earlier continental poets, 
since we are bound to the pleasant archipelago of English 
poetry, Chaucer's is the first name after that misty weather 
in which Ossian lived, which can detain us long. Indeed, 
though he represents so different a culture and society, he 
may be regarded as in many respects the Homer of the 
English poets. Perhaps he is the youthfulest of them all. 
We return to him as to the purest well, the fountain furthest 
removed from the highway of desultory life. He is so natural 
and cheerful, compared with later poets, that we might almost 
regard him as a personification of spring. To the faithful 
reader his muse has even given an aspect to his times, and 
when he is fresh from perusing him, they seem related to 
the golden age. It is still the poetry of youth and life, rather 
than of thought; and though the moral vein is obvious 
and constant, it has not yet banished the sim and daylight 
from his verse. The loftiest strains of the muse are, for the 
most part, sublimely plaintive, and not a carol as free as 
nature's. The content which the sun shines to celebrate 
from morning to evening, is unsung. The muse solaces 
herself, and is not ravished but consoled. There is a catas- 
trophe implied, and a tragic element in all our verse, and less 
of the lark and morning dews, than of the nightingale and 



274 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

evening shades. But in Homer and Chaucer there is more 
of the innocence and serenity of youth, than in the more 
modem and moral poets. The lUad is not Sabbath but 
morning reading, and men cHng to this old song, because 
they still have moments of unbaptized and uncommitted 
life, which give them an appetite for more. To the inno- 
cent there are neither cherubim nor angels. At rare inter- 
vals we rise above the necessity of virtue into an unchangeable 
morning light, in which we have only to live right on and 
breathe the ambrosial air. The Iliad represents no creed nor 
opinion, and we read it with a rare sense of freedom and 
irresponsibility, as if we trod on native ground, and were 
autochthones of the soil. 

Chaucer had eminently the habits of a literary man and 
a scholar. There were never any times so stirring that there 
were not to be found some sedentary still. He was sur- 
rounded by the din of arms. The battles of Halidon Hill 
and Neville's Cross, and the still more memorable battles 
of Cressy and Poictiers, were fought in his youth ; but these 
did not concern our poet much, Wickliffe and his reform 
much more. He regarded himself always as one privileged 
to sit and converse with books. He helped to establish 
the literary class. His character as one of the fathers of the 
English language, would alone make his works important, 
even those which have little poetical merit. He was as 
simple as Wordsworth in preferring his homely but vigorous 
Saxon tongue, when it was neglected by the court, and had 
not yet attained to the dignity of a literature, and rendered 
a similar service to his country to that which Dante rendered 
to Italy. If Greek sufhceth for Greek, and Arabic for 
Arabian, and Hebrew for Jew, and Latin for Latin, then 
English shall suffice for him, for any of these will serve to 
teach truth " right as divers pathes leaden divers folke the 
right waye to Rome." In the Testament of Love he writes, 
" Let then clerkes enditen in Latin, for they have the propertie 
of science, and the knowinge in that facultie, and lette 
Frenchmen in their Frenche also enditen their queinte 
termes, for it is kyndely to their mouthes, and let us she we 
our fantasies in soche wordes as we lerneden of our dame's 
tonge." 

He will know how to appreciate Chaucer best, who has 
come down to him the natural way, through the meagre 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 275 

pastures of Saxon and ante-Chaucerian poetry; and yet, 
so human and wise he appears after such diet, that we are 
liable to misjudge him still. In the Saxon poetry extant, 
in the earliest English, and the contemporary Scottish poetry, 
there is less to remind the reader of the rudeness and vigor 
of youth, than of the feebleness of a declining age. It is for 
the most part translation or imitation merely, with only an 
occasional and slight tinge of poetry, oftentimes the false- 
hood and exaggeration of fable, without its imagination to 
redeem it, and we look in vain to find antiquity restored, 
humanized, and made blithe again by some natural sympathy 
between it and the present. But Chaucer is fresh and modern 
still, and no dust settles on his true passages. It lightens 
along the line, and we are reminded that flowers have bloomed, 
and birds sung, and hearts beaten, in England. Before 
the earnest gaze of the reader, the rust and moss of time 
gradually drop off, and the original green life is revealed. 
He was a homely and domestic man, and did breathe quite as 
modern men do. 

There is no wisdom that can take place of humanity, and 
we find that in Chaucer. We can expand at last in his breath, 
and we think that we could have been that man's acquaint- 
ance. He was worthy to be a citizen of England, while 
Petrarch and Boccaccio lived in Italy, and Tell and Tamerlane 
in Switzerland and in Asia, and Bruce in Scotland, and Wick- 
liffe, and Gower, and Edward the Third, and John of Gaunt, 
and the Black Prince, were his own countrymen as well as 
contemporaries; all stout and stirring names. The fame 
of Roger Bacon came down from the preceding century, 
and the name of Dante still possessed the influence of a living 
presence. On the whole, Chaucer impresses us as greater 
thanh is reputation, and not a little like Homer and Shake- 
speare, for he would have held up his head in their company. 
Among early English poets he is the landlord and host, and 
has the authority of such. The affectionate mention which 
succeeding early poets make of him, coupling him with Homer 
and Virgil, is to be taken into the account in estimating his 
character and influence. King James and Dunbar of Scot- 
land speak of him with more love and reverence than any 
modern author of his predecessors of the last century. The 
same childlike relation is without a parallel now. For the 
most part we read him without criticism, for he does not 



276 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

plead his own cause, but speaks for his readers, and has that 
greatness of trust and reUance which compels popularity. 
He confides in the reader, and speaks privily with him, keep- 
ing nothing back. And in return the reader has great 
confidence in him, that he tells no lies, and reads his story 
with indulgence, as if it were the circumlocution of a child, 
but often discovers afterwards that he has spoken with more 
directness and economy of words than a sage. He is never 
heartless, 

"For first the thing is thought within the hart, 
Er any word out from the mouth astart." 

And so new was all his theme in those days, that he did not 
have to invent, but only to tell. 

We admire Chaucer for his sturdy English wit. The 
easy height he speaks from in his Prologue to the Canter- 
bury Tales, as if he were equal to any of the company there 
assembled, is as good as any particular excellence in it. But 
though it is full of good sense and humanity, it is not tran- 
scendent poetry. For picturesque descriptions of persons 
it is, perhaps, without a parallel in English poetry; yet it 
is essentially humorous, as the loftiest genius never is. 
Humor, however broad and genial, takes a narrower view 
than enthusiasm. To his own finer vein he added all the 
common wit and wisdom of his time, and everywhere in 
his works his remarkable knowledge of the world and nice 
perception of character, his rare common sense and pro- 
verbial wisdom, are apparent. His genius does not soar like 
Milton's, but is genial and familiar. It shows great tender- 
ness and delicacy, but not the heroic sentiment. It is only 
a greater portion of humanity with all its weakness. He 
is not heroic, as Raleigh, nor pious, as Herbert, nor philo- 
sophical, as Shakespeare, but he is the child of the English 
muse, that child which is the father of the man. The charm 
of his poetry consists often only in an exceeding naturalness, 
perfect sincerity, with the behavior of a child rather than of 
a man. 

Gentleness and delicacy of character are everywhere 
apparent in his verse. The simplest and humblest words 
come readily to his lips. No one can read the Prioress's tale, 
understanding the spirit in which it was written, and in which 
the child sings alma redemptoris mater, or the account of 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 277 

the departure of Constance with her child upon the sea, in 
the Man of Lawe's tale, without feeling the native innocence 
and refinement of the author. Nor can we be mistaken 
respecting the essential purity of his character, disregarding 
the apology of the manners of the age. A simple pathos 
and feminine gentleness, which Wordsworth only occasionally 
approaches, but does not equal, are peculiar to him. We are 
tempted to say that his genius was feminine, not masculine. 
It was such a feminineness, however, as is rarest to find in 
woman, though not the appreciation of it ; perhaps it is not 
to be found at all in woman, but is only the feminine in man. 

Sure pure, and genuine, and childlilsie love of Nature is 
hardly to be found in any poet. 

Chaucer's remarkably trustful and affectionate character 
appears in his familiar, yet innocent and reverent, manner 
of speaking of his God. He comes into his thought without 
any false reverence, and with no more parade than the 
zephyr to his ear. If Nature is our mother, then God is 
our father. There is less love and simple practical trust 
in Shakespeare and Milton. How rarely in our English 
tongue do we find expressed any affection for God. Cer- 
tainly, there is no sentiment so rare as the love of God. 
Herbert almost alone expresses it, " Ah, my dear God ! " 
Our poet uses similar words with propriety, and whenever 
he sees a beautiful person, or other object, prides himself on 
the " maistry " of his God. He even recommends Dido 
to be his bride, — 

"if that God that heaven and yearth made, 

Would have a love for beauty and goodnesse, 
And womanhede, trouth, and semeliness." 

But in justification of our praise, we must refer to his 
works themselves; to the Prologue to the Canterbury 
Tales, the accoimt of Gentilesse, the Flower and the Leaf, 
the stories of Griselda, Virginia, Ariadne, and Blanche the 
Duchesse, and much more of less distinguished merit. There 
are many poets of more taste and better manners, who knew 
how to leave out their dulness, but such negative genius 
cannot detain us long ; we shall return to Chaucer still with 
love. Some natures which are really rude and ill developed, 
have yet a higher standard of perfection than others which 
are refined and well balanced. Even the clown has taste, 



278 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

whose dictates, though he disregards them, are higher and 
purer than those which the artist obeys. If we have to 
wander through many dull and prosaic passages in Chaucer, 
we have at least the satisfaction of knowing that it is not 
an artificial dulness, but too easily matched by many passages 
in life. We confess that we feel a disposition commonly 
to concentrate sweets, and accumulate pleasures, but the 
poet may be presumed always to speak as a traveller, who 
leads us through a varied scenery, from one eminence to 
another, and it is, perhaps, more pleasing, after all, to meet 
with a fine thought in its natural setting. Surely fate has 
enshrined it in these circumstances for some end. Nature 
strews her nuts and flowers broadcast, and never collects 
them into heaps. This was the soil it grew in, and this the 
hour it bloomed in; if sun, wind, and rain came here to 
cherish and expand the flower, shall not we come here to 
pluck it? ... . 

A true poem is distinguished not so much by a felicitous 
expression, or any thought it suggests, as by the atmosphere 
which surrounds it. Most have beauty of outline merely, 
and are striking as the form and bearing of a stranger, but 
true verses come toward us indistinctly, as the very breath 
of all friendliness, and envelop us in their spirit and fragrance. 
Much of our poetry has the very best manners, but no char- 
acter. It is only an unusual precision and elasticity of speech, 
as if its author had taken, not an intoxicating draught, but 
an electuary. It has the distinct outline of sculpture, and 
chronicles an early hour. Under the influence of passion 
all men speak thus distinctly, but wrath is not always divine. 

There are two classes of men called poets. The one 
cultivates life, the other art, — one seeks food for nutriment, 
the other for flavor ; one satisfies hunger, the other gratifies 
the palate. There are two kinds of writing, both great and 
rare ; one that of genius, or the inspired, the other of intellect 
and taste, in the intervals of inspiration. The former is 
above criticism, always correct, giving the law to criticism. 
It vibrates and pulsates with life forever. It is sacred, and 
to be read with reverence, as the works of nature are studied. 
There are few instances of a sustained style of this kind ; 
perhaps every man has spoken words, but the speaker is 
then careless of the record. Such a style removes us out 
of personal relations with its author, we do not take his 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 279 

words on our lips, but his sense into our hearts. It is the 
stream of inspiration, which bubbles out, now here, now 
there, now in this man, now in that. It matters not through 
what ice-crystals it is seen, now a fountain, now the ocean 
stream ruiming imder ground. It is in Shakespeare, Al- 
pheus, in Burns, Arethuse ; but ever the same. — The other 
is self-possessed and wise. It is reverent of genius, and greedy 
of inspiration. It is conscious in the highest and the least 
degree. It consists with the most perfect command of the 
faculties. It dwells in a repose as of the desert, and objects 
are as distinct in it as oases or palms in the horizon of sand. 
The train of thought moves with subdued and measured 
step, like a caravan. But the pen is only an instrument in 
its hand, and not instinct with life, like a longer arm. It 
leaves a thin varnish or glaze over all its work. The works 
of Goethe furnish remarkable instances of the latter. 

There is no just and serene criticism as yet. -Nothing 
is considered simply as it lies in the lap of eternal beauty, but 
our thoughts, as well as our bodies, must be dressed after 
the latest fashions. Our taste is too delicate and particular. 
It says nay to the poet's work, but never yea to his hope. 
It invites him to adorn his deformities, and not to cast them 
off by expansion, as the tree its bark. We are a people who 
live in a bright light, in houses of pearl and porcelain, and 
drink only light wines, whose teeth are easily set on edge by 
the least natural sour. If we had been consulted, the back- 
bone of the earth would have been made, not of granite, 
but of Bristol spar. A modern author would have died in 
infancy in a ruder age. But the poet is something more than 
a scald, " a smoother and polisher of language ; '' he is a Cin- 
cinnatus in literature, and occupies no west end of the world. 
Like the sun, he will indifferently select his rhymes, and with 
a liberal taste weave into his verse the planet and the stubble. 

In these old books the stucco has long since crumbled 
away, and we read what was sculptured in the granite. 
They are rude and massive in their proportions, rather than 
smooth and delicate in their finish. The workers in stone 
polish only their chimney ornaments, but their pyramids 
are rouglily done. There is a soberness in a rough aspect, 
as of imhewn granite, which addresses a depth in us, but a 
polished surface hits only the ball of the eye. The true 
finish is the work of time and the use to which a thing is 



280 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

put. The elements are still polishing the pyramids. Art 
may varnish and gild, but it can do no more. A work of 
genius is rough-hewn from the first, because it anticipates 
5ie lapse of time, and has an ingrained polish, which still 
appears when fragments are broken off, an essential quality 
of its substance. Its beauty is at the same time its strength, 
and it breaks with a lustre. 

The great poem must have the stamp of greatness as well 
as its essence. The reader easily goes within the shallowest 
contemporary poetry, and informs it with all the life and 
promise of the day, as the pilgrim goes within the temple, 
and hears the faintest strains of the worshippers; but it 
will have to speak to posterity, traversing these deserts, 
through the ruins of its outmost walls, by the grandeur and 
beauty of its proportions. 



But here on the stream of the Concord, where we have all 
the while been bodily. Nature, who is superior to all styles 
and ages, is now, with pensive face, composing her poem 
Autumn, with which no work of man will bear to be com- 
pared. 

In summer we live out of doors, and have only impulses 
and feelings, which are all for action, and must wait commonly 
for the stillness and longer nights of autumn and winter 
before any thought will subside ; we are sensible that behind 
the rustling leaves, and the stacks of grain, and the bare 
clusters of the grape, there is the field of a wholly new life, 
which no man has lived ; that even this earth was made for 
more mysterious and nobler inhabitants than men and 
women. In the hues of October simsets, we see the portals 
to other mansions than those which we occupy, not far off 
geographically. — 

"There is a place beyond that flaming hiU, 

From whence the stars their thin appearance shed, 
A place beyond all place, where never ill, 
Nor impure thought was ever harbored." 

Sometimes a mortal feels in himself Nature, not his Father 
but his Mother stirs within him, and he becomes immortal 
with her immortality. From time to time she claims kindred- 
ship with us, and some globule from her veins steals up into 
our own. 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 281 

I am the autumnal sun, 
With autumn gales my race is run ; 
When will the hazel put forth its flowers, 
Or the grape ripen under my bowers? 
When will the harvest or the hunter's moon, 
Turn my mid-night into mid-noon? 

I am all sere and yellow. 

And to mj^ core mellow. 
The mast is dropping within my woods, 
The winter is lurking within my moods, 
And the rusthng of the withered leaf 
Is the constant music of my grief. 

To an unskilful rhymer the Muse thus spoke in prose : — 

The moon no longer reflects the dsij, but rises to her 
absolute rule, and the husbandman and hunter acknowledge 
her for their mistress. Asters and golden-rods reign along 
the way, and the life-ever-lasting withers not. The fields 
are reaped and shorn of their pride, but an inward verdure 
still crowns them. The thistle scatters its down on the pool^ 
and yellow leaves clothe the vine, and naught disturbs the 
serious life of men. But behind the sheaves, and under the 
sod, there lurks a ripe fruit, which the reapers have not 
gathered, the true harvest of the year, which it bears for ever, 
annually watering and maturing it, and man never severs 
the staii: which bears this palatable fruit. 

Men nowhere, east or west, live yet a natural life, round 
which the vine clings, and which the elm willingly shadows. 
Man would desecrate it by his touch, and so the beauty of 
the world remains veiled to him. He needs not only to be 
spiritualized, but naturalized, on the soil of earth. Who 
shall conceive what kind of roof the heavens might extend 
over him, what seasons minister to him, and what employ- 
ment dignify his life! Only the convalescent raise the veil 
of nature. An immortality in his life would confer immor- 
tality on his abode. The winds should be his breath, the 
seasons his moods, and he should impart of his serenity to 
Nature herself. But such as we know him he is ephemeral 
like the scenery that surrounds him, and does not aspire 
to an enduring existence. When we come down into the 
distant village, visible from the mountain top, the nobler 
inhabitants with whom we peopled it have departed, and left 



282 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

only vermin in its desolate streets. It is the imagination 
of poets which puts those brave speeches into the mouths of 
their heroes. They may feign that Cato's last words were 

"The earth, the air, and seas I know, and all 
The joys and horrors of their peace and wars ; 
And now will view the Gods' state and the stars," 

but such are not the thoughts nor the destiny of common 
men. What is this heaven which they expect, if it is no better 
than they expect? Are they prepared for a better than 
they can now imagine? Here or nowhere is our heaven. — 

"Although we see celestial bodies move 
Above the earth, the earth we till and love." 

We can conceive of nothing more fair than something which 
we have experienced. " The remembrance of youth is 
a sigh." We linger in manhood to tell the dreams of our 
childhood, and they are half forgotten ere we have learned 
the language. We have need to be earth-born as well as 
heaven-born, yqy€vC<i, as was said of the Titans of old, 
or in a better sense than they. There have been heroes 
for whom this world seemed expressly prepared, as if creation 
had at last succeeded; whose daily life was the stuff of 
which our dreams are made, and whose presence enhanced 
the beauty and ampleness of Nature herself. Where they 
walked, 

"Largior hie campos sether et lumine vestit 
Purpureo : Solemque suum, sua sidera norunt." 

" Here a more copious air invests the fields, and clothes with 
purple light; and they know their own sun and their own 
stars." We love to hear some men speak, though we hear 
not what they say ; the very air they breathe is rich and per- 
fumed, and the sound of their voices falls on the ear like the 
rustling of leaves or the crackling of the fire. They stand 
many deep. They have the heavens for their abettors, as 
those who have never stood from under them, and they look 
at the stars with an answering ray. Their eyes are like 
glow-worms, and their motions graceful and flowing, as if 
a place were already found for them, like rivers flowing 
through valleys. The distinctions of morality, of right 
and wrong, sense and nonsense, are petty, and have lost their 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 283 

significance, beside these pure primeval natures. When 
I consider the clouds stretched in stupendous masses across 
the sky, frowning with darkness, or glowing with downy- 
light, or gilded with the rays of the setting sun, like the 
battlements of a city in the heavens, their grandeur appears 
thrown away on the meanness of my employment; the 
drapery is altogether too rich for such poor acting. I am 
hardly worthy to be a suburban dweller outside those walls. 

"Unless above himself he can 
Erect himself, how poor a thing is man !" 

With our music we would fain challenge transiently another 
and finer sort of intercourse than our daily toil permits. 
The strains come back to us amended in the echo, as when a 
friend reads our verse. Why have they so painted the fruits, 
and freighted them with such fragrances as to satisfy a more 
than animal appetite? 

"I asked the schoolman, his advice was free, 
But scored me out too intricate a way." 

These things imply, perchance, that we live on the verge of 
another and purer realm, from which these odors and sounds 
are wafted over to us. The borders of our plot are set with 
flowers, whose seeds were blown from more Elysian fields 
adjacent. They are the pot-herbs of the gods. Some 
fairer fruits and sweeter fragrances wafted over to us, betray 
another realm's vicinity. There, too, does Echo dwell, 
and there is the abutment of the rainbow's arch. 

A finer race and finer fed 
Feast and revel o'er our head, 
And we titmen are only able 
To catch the fragments from their table. 
Theirs is the fragrance of the fruits, 
While we consume the pulp and roots. 
What are the moments that we stand 
Astonished on the Olympian land ! 

We need pray for no higher heaven than the pure senses can 
furnish, a purely sensuous life. Our present senses are but 
the rudiments of what they are destined to become. We are 
comparatively deaf and dumb and blind, and without smell 
or taste or feeling. Every generation makes the discovery, 



284 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

that its divine vigor has been dissipated, and each sense and 
faculty misappHed and debauched. The ears were made, 
not for such trivial uses as men are wont to suppose, but to 
hear celestial sounds. The eyes were not made for such 
grovelling uses as they are now put to and worn out by, but 
to behold beauty now invisible. May we not see God ? Are 
we to be put off and amused in this life, as it were with a mere 
allegory? Is not Nature, rightly read, that of which she is 
commonly taken to be the symbol merely? When the 
common man looks into the sky, which he has not so much 
profaned, he thinks it less gross than the earth, and with 
reverence speaks of " the Heavens," but the seer will in the 
same sense speak of " the Earths," and his Father who 
is in them. " Did not he that made that which is within, 
make that which is without also?" What is it, then, to 
educate but to develop these divine germs called the senses? 
for individuals and states to deal magnanimously with the 
rising generation, leading it not into temptation, — not 
teach the eye to squint, nor attune the ear to profanity? 
But where is the instructed teacher? Where are the normal 
schools? 

A Hindoo sage said, " As a dancer having exhibited herself 
to the spectator, desists from the dance, so does Nature 
desist, having manifested herself to soul. — Nothing, in 
my opinion, is more gentle than Nature; once aware of 
having been seen, she does not again expose herself to the 
gaze of soul." 

It is easier to discover another such a new wol-ld as Colum- 
bus did, than to go within one fold of this which we appear 
to know so well ; the land is lost sight of, the compass varies, 
and mankind mutiny; and still history accmnulates like 
rubbish before the portals of nature. But there is only 
necessary a moment's sanity and sound senses, to teach 
us that there is a nature behind the ordinary, in which we 
have only some vague preemption right and western reserve 
as yet. We live on the outskirts of that region. Carved 
wood, and floating boughs, and sunset skies, are all that 
we know of it. We are not to be imposed on by the longest 
speU of weather. Let us not, my friends, be wheedled and 
cheated into good behavior to earn the salt of our eternal 
porridge, whoever they are that attempt it. Let us wait 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 285 

a little, and not purchase any clearing here, trusting that 
richer bottoms will soon be put up. It is but thin soil where 
we stand ; I have felt my roots in a richer ere this. I have 
seen a bunch of violets in a glass vase, tied loosely with a 
straw, which reminded me of myself. — 

I am a parcel of vain strivings tied 
By a chance bond together, 
Dangling this way and that, their links 
Were made so loose and wide, 
Methinks, 
For milder weather. 

A bunch of violets without their roots. 
And sorrel intermixed, 
Encircled by a wisp of straw 
Once coiled about their shoots. 
The law 
By which I'm fixed. 

A nosegay which Time clutched from out 
Those fair Elysian fields, 
With weeds and broken stems, in haste. 
Doth make the rabble rout 
That waste 
The day he yields. 

And here I bloom for a short hour unseen, 
Drinking my juices up. 
With no root in the land 
To keep my branches green, 
But stand 
In a bare cup. 

Some tender buds were left upon my stem 
In mimicry of life. 
But ah ! the children wiU not know. 
Till time has withered them, 
The wo 
With which they're rife. 

But now I see I was not plucked for naught, 
And after in life's vase 
Of glass set while I might survive. 
But by a kind hand brought 
AUve 
To a strange place. 



286 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

That stock thus thinned will soon redeem its hours, 
And by another year, 
Such as God knows, with freer air, 
More fruits and fairer flowers 
Will bear, 
While I droop here. 

This world has many rings, like Saturn, and we live now 
on the outmost of them all. None can say deliberately that 
he inhabits the same sphere, or is contemporary with, the 
flower which his hands have plucked, and though his feet 
may seem to crush it, inconceivable spaces and ages separate 
them, and perchance there is no danger that he will hurt it. 
What after all do the botanists know? Our lives should go 
between the lichen and the bark. The eye may see for the 
hand, but not for the mind. We are still being bom, and 
have as yet but a dim vision of sea and land, sun, moon and 
stars, and shall not see clearly till after nine days at least. 
That is a pathetic inquiry among travellers and geographers 
after the sight of ancient Troy. It is not near where they 
think it is. When a thing is decayed and gone, how indis- 
tinct must be the place it occupied ! 

The anecdotes of modern astronomy affect me in the same 
way as do those faint revelations of the Real which are 
vouchsafed to men from time to time, or rather from eternity 
to eternity. When I remember the history of that faint 
light in our firmament, which we call Venus, which ancient 
men regarded, and which most modem men still regard, as 
a bright spark attached to a hollow sphere revolving about 
our earth, but which we have discovered to be another world 
in itself, — how Copernicus, reasoning long and patiently 
about the matter, predicted confidently concerning it, before 
yet the telescope had been invented, that if ever men came 
to see it more clearly than they did then, they would discover 
that it had phases like our moon, and that within a century 
after his death the telescope was invented, and that pre- 
diction verified, by Galileo, — I am not without hope that 
we may, even here and now, obtain some accurate infor- 
mation concerning that Other World which the instinct 
of mankind has so long predicted. Indeed, all that we 
call science, as well as all that we call poetry, is a particle 
of such information, accurate as far as it goes, though it be 
but to the confines of the truth. If we can reason so ac- 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 287 

curately, and with such wonderful confirmation of our 
reasoning, respecting so-called material objects and events 
infinitely removed beyond the range of our natural vision, 
so that the mind hesitattes to trust its calculations even 
when they are confirmed by observation, why may not our 
speculations penetrate as far into the immaterial starry system, 
of which the former is but the outward and visible type? 
Surely, we are provided with senses as well fitted to penetrate 
the spaces of the real, the substantial, the eternal, as these 
outward are to penetrate the material universe. Veias, 
Menu, Zoroaster, Socrates, Christ, Shakespeare, Swedenborg, 
■ — these are some of our astronomers. 

There are perturbations in our orbits produced by the 
influence of outlying spheres, and no astronomer has ever 
yet calculated the elements of that undiscovered world 
which produces them. I perceive in the common train of 
my thoughts a natural and uninterrupted sequence, each im- 
plying the next, or, if interruption occurs it is occasioned by 
a new object being presented to my serises. But a steep, 
and sudden, and by these means unaccountable transition, 
is that from a comparatively narrow and partial, what is 
called common sense view of things, to an infinitely expanded 
and liberating one, from seeing things as men describe them, 
to seeing them as men cannot describe them. This implies 
a sense which is not common, but rare in the wisest man's 
experience ; which is sensible or sentient of more than 
common. 

In what inclosures does the astronomer loiter! His skies 
are shoal; and imagination, like a thirsty traveller, pants 
to be through their desert. The roving mind impatiently 
bursts the fetters of astronomical orbits, like cobwebs in a 
corner of its universe, and laimches itself to where distance 
fails to follow, and law, such as science has discovered, 
grows weak and weary. The mind knows a distance and a 
space of which all those siuns combined do not make a unit 
of measure, — the interval between that which appears 
and that which is. I know that there are many stars, I know 
that they are far enough off, bright enough, steady enough 
in their orbits, — but what are they all worth? They are 
more waste land in the West, — star territory, — to be 
made slave States, perchance, if we colonize them. I 
have interest but for six feet of star, and that interest is 



288 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

transient. Then farewell to all ye bodies, such as I have 
known ye. 

Every man, if he is wise, will stand on such bottom as 
will sustain him, and if one gravitates downward more 
strongly than another, he will not venture on those meads 
where the latter walks securely, but rather leave the cran- 
berries which grow there unraked by himself. Perchance, 
some spring^a higher freshet will float them within his reach, 
though they may be watery and frost-bitten by that time. 
Such shrivelled berries I have seen in many a poor man's 
garret, aye, in many a church bin and state coffer, and with 
a little water and heat they swell again to their original size 
and fairness, and added sugar enough, st^ad mankind for 
sauce to this world's dish. 

What is called common sense is excellent in its department, 
and as invaluable as the virtue of conformity in the army 
and navy, — for there must be subordination, — but un- 
common sense, that sense which is common only to the wisest, 
is as much more excellent as it is more rare. Some aspire 
to excellence in the subordinate department, and may God 
speed them. What Fuller says of masters of colleges is 
universally applicable, that " a little alloy of dulness in 
a master of a college makes him fitter to manage secular 
affairs.'^ 

"He that wants faith, and apprehends a grief 
Because he wants it, hath a true beUef ; 
And he that grieves because his grief 's so small, 
Has a true grief, and the best Faith of aU." 

Or be encouraged by this other poet^s strain. 

" By them went Fido marshal of the field : 

Weak was his mother when she gave him day ; 
And he at first a sick and weakly child, 

As e'er with tears welcomed the sunny ray ; 

Yet when more years afford more growth and might, 
A champion stout he was, and puissant knight. 
As ever came in field, or shone in armor bright. 

" Mountains he flings in seas with mighty hand ; 

Stops and turns back the sun's impetuous course ; 
Nature breaks Nature's laws at his command ; 
No force of Hell or Heaven withstands his force : 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 289 

Events to come yet many ages hence, 
He present makes, by wondrous prescience ; 
Proving the senses blind by being blind to sense." 

" Yesterday, at dawn," says Hafiz, " God delivered me from 
all worldly affliction; and amidst the gloom of night pre- 
sented me with the water of immortality." 

In the life of Sadi by Dowlat Shah, occurs this sentence. 
" The eagle of the immaterial soul of Shaikh Sadi shook 
from his plumage the dust of his body." 

Thus thoughtfully we were rowing homeward to find some 
autumnal work to do, and help on the revolution of the 
seasons. Perhaps Nature would condescend to make use 
of us even without our knowledge, as when we help to scatter 
her seeds in our walks, and carry burrs and cockles on our 
clothes from field to field. 

All things are current found 
On earthly ground, 
Spirits and elements 
Have their descents. 

Night and day, year on year, 
High and low, far and near, 
These are our own aspects, 
These are our own regrets. 

Ye gods of the shore. 
Who abide evermore, 
I see your far headland, 
Stretching on either hand ; 

I hear the sweet evening sounds 
From your undecaying grounds ; 
Cheat me no more with time, 
Take me to your clime. 

As it grew later in the afternoon, and we rowed leisurely 
up the gentle stream, shut in between fragrant and blooming 
banks, where we had first pitched our tent, and drew nearer 
to the fields where our lives had passed, we seemed to detect 
the hues of our native sky in the south-west horizon. The 
sun was just setting behind the edge of a wooded hill, so rich 



290 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

a sunset as would never have ended but for some reason un- 
known to men, and to be marked with brighter colors than 
ordinary in the scroll of time. Though the shadows of the 
hills were beginning to steal over the stream, the whole river 
valley undulated with mild light, purer and more memorable 
than the noon. For so day bids farewell even to solitary 
vales uninhabited by man. Two blue-herons, ardea herodias, 
with their long and slender limbs relieved against the sky, 
were seen travelling high over our heads, — their lofty and 
silent flight, as they were wending their way at evening, 
surely not to alight in any marsh on the earth's surface 
but, perchance, on the other side of our atmosphere, a symbol 
for the ages to study, whether impressed upon the sky, or 
sculptured amid the hieroglyphics of Egypt. Bound to 
some northern meadow, they held on their stately, stationary 
flight, like the storks in the picture, and disappeared at length 
behind the clouds. Dense flocks of blackbirds were winging 
their way along the river's course, as if on a short evening 
pilgrimage to some shrine of theirs, or to celebrate so fair 
a sunset. 

''Therefore, as doth the pilgrim, whom the night 
Hastes darkly to imprison on his way, 
Think on thy home, my soul, and think aright 
Of what 's yet left thee of life's wasting day : 
Thy sun posts westward, passed is thy mom, 
And twice it is not given thee to be born." 

The sun-setting presumed all men at leisure and in a con- 
templative mood; but the farmer's boy only whistled the 
more thoughtfully as he drove his cows home from pasture, 
and the teamster refrained from cracking his whip, and guided 
his team with a subdued voice. The last vestiges of daylight 
at length disappeared, and as we rowed silently along with 
our backs toward home through the darkness, only a few 
stars being visible, we had little to say, but sat absorbed in 
thought, or in silence listened to the monotonous sound of 
our oars, a sort of rudiment al music, suitable for the ear of 
Night and the acoustics of her dimly lighted halls ; 

"Puls8B referunt ad sidera valles," 

and the valleys echoed the sound to the stars. 

As we looked up in silence to those distant lights, we were 



AND MERRIMACK RIVERS 291 

reminded that it was a rare imagination which first taught 
that the stars are worlds, and had conferred a great benefit 
on mankind. It is recorded in the Chronicle of Bernaldez, 
that in Columbus's first voyage the natives " pointed towards 
the heavens, making signs that they believed that there was 
all power and holiness." We have reason to be grateful for 
celestial phenomena, for they chiefly answer to the ideal in 
man. The stars are distant and unobtrusive, but bright 
and enduring as our fairest and most memorable experiences. 
" Let the immortal depth of your soul lead you, but earnestly 
extend your eyes upwards." 

As the truest society approaches always nearer to solitude, 
so the most excellent speech finally falls into Silence. Silence 
is audible to all men, at all times, and in all places. She is 
when we hear inwardly, sound when we hear outwardly. 
Creation has not displaced her, but is her visible framework 
and foil. All sounds are her servants and purveyors, pro- 
claiming not only that their mistress is, but is a rare mistress, 
and earnestly to be sought after. They are so far akin to 
Silence, that they are but bubbles on her surface, which 
straightway burst, an evidence of the strength and prolific- 
ness of the under-current ; a faint utterance of silence, and 
then only agreeable to our auditory nerves when they contrast 
themselves with and relieve the former. In proportion as 
they do this, and are heighteners and intensifiers of the 
Silence, they are harmony and purest melody. 

Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull dis- 
courses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, 
as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that 
background which the painter may not daub, be he master 
or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may 
have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable 
asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality dis- 
turb us. 

The orator puts off his individuaHty, and is then most 
eloquent when most silent. He listens while he speaks, and 
is a hearer along with his audience. Who has not hearkened 
to Her infinite din? She is Truth's speaking trumpet, the 
sole oracle, the true Delphi and Dodona, which kings and 
courtiers would do well to consult, nor will they be balked 
by an ambiguous answer. For through Her all revelations 



292 A WEEK ON THE CONCORD 

have been made, and just in proportion as men have con- 
sulted her oracle within, they have obtained a clear insight, 
and their age has been marked as an enlightened one. But as 
often as they have gone gadding abroad to a strange Delphi 
and her mad priestess, their age has been dark and leaden. 
Such were garrulous and noisy eras, which no longer yield 
any sound, but the Grecian or silent and melodious era is 
ever sounding and resounding in the ears of men. 

A good book is the plectrum with which our else silent 
lyres are struck. We not unfrequently refer the interest 
which belongs to our own unwritten sequel, to the written 
and comparatively lifeless body of the work. Of all books 
this sequel is the most indispensable part. It should be 
the author's aim to say once and emphatically, " He said," 
" €<t>r].'' This is the most the bookmaker can attain to. 
If he make his volume a mole whereon the waves of Silence 
may break, it is well. 

It were vain for me to endeavor to interpret the Silence. 
She cannot be done into English. For six thousand years 
men have translated her with what fidelity belonged to each, 
and still she is little better than a sealed book. A man may 
run on confidently for a time, thinking he has her under his 
thumb, and shaU one day exhaust her, but he too must at 
last be silent, and men remark only how brave a beginning 
he made; for when he at length dives into her, so vast is 
the disproportion of the told to the untold, that the former 
will seem but the bubble on the surface where he disappeared. 
Nevertheless, we will go on, like those Chinese cliff swallows, 
feathering our nests with the froth which may one day be 
bread of life to such as dwell by the seashore. 

We had made about fifty miles this day with sail and oar, 
and now, far in the evening, our boat was grating against 
the bulrushes of its native port, and its keel recognized the 
Concord mud, where some semblance of its outline was still 
preserved in the flattened flags which had scarce yet erected 
themselves since our departure; and we leaped gladly on 
shore, drawing it up, and fastening it to the wild apple tree, 
whose stem still bore the mark which its chain had worn in 
the chafing of the spring freshets. 



THE MODERN 
STUDENT'S LIBRARY 

Each volume edited with an introduction by a leading 

American authority 

WILL D. HOWE, General Editor 

This series is composed of such works as are conspicuous in the 
province of literature for their enduring influence. Every volume 
is recognized as essential to a Hberal education and will tend to in- 
fuse a love for true literature and an appreciation of the qualities 
which cause it to endure. 



A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND 

MERRIMAC RIVERS 

By Henry David Thoreau 

With an Introduction by 
ODELL SHEPARD 

Professor of English at Trinity College 

"... Here was a man who stood with his head in the clouds, 
perhaps, but with his feet firmly planted on rubble and grit. He 
was true to the kindred points of Heaven and Home. Thoreau's 
eminently practical thought was really concerned, in the last anal- 
ysis with definite human problems. The major question how to live 
was at the end of all his vistas." 

EMERSON'S ESSAYS 

Selected and edited, with an Introduction, by 
ARTHUR HOBSON QUINN 

Professor of English and Dean of the College University of 
Pennsylvania 

" Among the shifting values in our literary history, Emerson stands 
secure. As a people we are rather prone to underestimate our native 
writers in relation to English and continental authors, but even 
among those who have been content to treat our literature as a by- 
product of British letters, Emerson's significance has become only 
more apparent with time." 



THE MODERN STUDENT'S LIBRARY 

THE ESSAYS OF 
ADDISON AND STEELE 

Selected and edited by 
WILL D. HOWE 

Professor of English at Indiana University 

With the writings of these two remarkable essayists modem prose 
began. It is not merely that their style even to-day, after two cen- 
turies, commands attention, it is equally noteworthy that these 
men were among the first to show the possibilities of our language 
in developing a reading public. 

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AND 
JONATHAN EDWARDS 

With an Introduction by 
CARL VAN DOREN 

Franklin and Edwards often sharply contrasted in thought are, 
however, in the main, complimentary to each other. In religion, 
Franklin was the utilitarian, Edwards the mystic. Franklin was 
more interested in practical morality than in revelation; Edwards 
sought a spiritual exaltation in religious ecstasy. In science Frank- 
lin was the practical experimenter, Edwards the detached observer, 
the theoretical investigator of causes. 

THE 
HEART OF MIDLOTHIAN 

By Sir Walter Scott 

With an Introduction by 
WILLIAM P. TRENT 

Professor of English at Columbia University 

Universally admitted one of the world's greatest story-tellers, 
Scott himself considered "The Heart of Midlothian" his master- 
piece, and it has been accepted as such by most of his admirers. 



THE MODERN STUDENTS LIBRARY 

THE ORDEAL OF 

RICHARD FEVEREL 

By George Meredith 

With an Introduction by 
FRANK W. CHANDLER 

Professor of English at the University of Cincinnati 

"The Ordeal of Richard Feverel," published in 1859, was Mere- 
dith's first modern novel and probably his best. Certainly it was, 
and has remained, the most generally popular of all this author's 
books and among the works of its type it stands pre-eminent. The 
story embodies in the most beautiful form the idea that in life the 
whole truth and nothing but the truth is best. 

MEREDITH'S 
ESSAY ON COMEDY 

With an Introduction, Notes, and Biographical Sketch by 
LANE COOPER 

Professor of English at Cornell University 

**Good comedies," Meredith tells us, "are such rare productions 
that, notwithstanding the wealth of our literature in the comic 
element, it would not occupy us long to run over the English list." 

The "Essay on Comedy" is in a peculiarly intimate way the ex- 
position of Meredith's attitude toward life and art. It helps us to 
understand more adequately the subtle delicacies of his novels. 

CRITICAL ESSAYS OF THE 
NINETEENTH CENTURY 

Selected and edited, with an Introduction, by 
RAYMOND M. ALDEN 

Professor of English at Leland Stanford University 

The essays in this volume include those of Wordsworth, Copleston, 
Jeffrey, Scott, Coleridge, Lockhart, Lamb, Hazlitt, Byron, Shelley, 
Newman, DeQuincey, Macaulay, Wilson, and Hunt. 



THE MODERN STUDENT'S LIBRARY 

ENGLISH POETS OF THE 
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 

Selected and Edited by 
ERNEST BERNBAUM 

Professor of English at the University of Illinois 

The great age of the eighteenth century is, more than any other, 
perhaps, mirrored in its poetry, and this anthology reveals its man- 
ners and ideals. 

While the text of the various poems is authentic, it is not bur- 
dened with scholastic editing and marginal comment. The collec- 
tion and its form is one which satisfies in an unusual way the in- 
terest of the general reader as well as that of the specialist. 

PILGRIM'S PROGRESS 
By John Bunyan 

With an Introduction and Notes by 
DR. S. M. CROTHERS 

This book is one of the most vivid and entertaining in the English 
language, one that has been read more than any other in our lan- 
guage, except the Bible. 

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE 
By Jane Austen 

With an Introduction by 
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS 

To have this masterpiece of realistic literature introduced by so 
eminent a critic as William Dean Howells is, in itself, an event in 
the literary world. We cannot better comment upon the edition 
than by quoting from Mr. Howells' s introduction: 

He says: "When I came to read the book the tenth or fifteenth 
time for the purposes of this introduction, I found it as fresh as when 
I read it first in 1889, after long shying off from it." 



THE MODERN STUDENT'S LIBRARY 

NINETEENTH CENTURY 
LETTERS 

Selected and Edited by 
BYRON JOHNSON REES 

Professor of English at Williams College 

Contains letters from William Blake, William Wordsworth, 
Sydney Smith, Robert Southey, Charles Lamb, Washington Irving, 
Benjamin Robert Hay don, John Keats, Jane Welsh Carlyle, Ralph 
Waldo Emerson, John Sterling, Abraham Lincoln, William Make- 
peace Thackeray, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Matthew Arnold, 
Thomas Henry Huxley, George Meredith, "Lewis Carroll," Phillips 
Brooks, Sidney Lanier, and Robert Louis Stevenson. 



PAST AND PRESENT 

By Thomas Carlyle 

With an Introduction by 
EDWIN W. MIMS 

Professor of English at Vanderbilt University 

"Past and Present," written in 1843, when the industrial revolu- 
tions had just taken place in England and when democracy and 
freedom were the watchwords of liberals and progressives, reads like 
a contemporary volume on industrial and social problems. 

BOSWELL'S 
LIFE OF JOHNSON 

Abridged and edited, with an Introduction and Notes, by 
CHARLES G. OSGOOD 

Professor of English at Princeton University 

Bos well has created one of the great masterpieces of the world. 

Seldom has an abridgment been made with as great skill in omit- 
ting nothing vital and keeping proper proportions as this edition by 
Professor Osgood. 



THE MODERN STUDENT'S LIBRARY 



BACON'S ESSAYS 

Selected, with an Introduction and Notes, by 
MARY AUGUSTA SCOTT 

Late Professor of English Literature at Smith College 

These essays, the distilled wisdom of a great observer upon the 
afiPairs of common life, are of endless interest and profit. The more 
one reads them the more remarkable seem their compactness and 
their vitality. 

ADAM BEDE 
By George Eliot 

With an Introduction by 
LAURA J. WYLIE 

Professor of English at Vassar College 

With the publication of "Adam Bede" in 1859, it was evident 
both to England and America that a great novelist had appeared. 
*'Adam Bede" is the most natural of George Eliot's books, simple 
in problem, direct in action, with the freshness and strength of the 
Derbyshire landscape and character and speech in its pages. 



THE RING AND THE BOOK 
By Robert Browning 

With an Introduction by 
FREDERICK MORGAN PADELFORD 

Professor of English at Washington University 

"" 'The Ring and the Book,' " says Dr. Padelford in his introduc- 
tion, "is Browning's supreme literary achievement. It was written 
after the poet had attained complete mastery of his very individual 
style; it absorbed his creative activity for a prolonged period; and it 
issued with the stamp of his characteristic genius on every page." 



THE MODERN STUDENTS LIBRARY 

ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON'S 

ESSAYS 

With an Introduction by 
WILLIAM LYON PHELPS 

Professor of English at Yale University 

This volume includes not only essays in formal literary criticism, 
but also of personal monologue and gossip, as well as philosophical 
essays on the greatest themes that can occupy the mind of man. All 
reveal the complex, whimsical, humorous, romantic, imaginative, 
puritanical personality now known everywhere by the formula 
R. L. S. 

PENDENNIS 
By Thackeray 

With an Introduction by 
ROBERT MORSS LOVETT 

Professor of English at the University of Chicago 

"Pendennis" stands as a great representative of biographical 
fiction and reflects more of the details of Thackeray's life than all 
his other writings. Of its kind there is probably no more interesting 
book in our literature. 

THE 
RETURN OF THE NATIVE 

By Thomas Hardy 

With an Introduction and Notes by 
JOHN W. CUNLIFFE 

Professor of English at Columbia University 

"The Return of the Native" is probably Thomas Hardy's great 
tragic masterpiece. It carries to the highest perfection the rare 
genius of the finished writer. It presents in the most remarkable 
way Hardy's interpretation of nature in which there is a perfect 
unison between the physical world and the human character. 



THE MODERN STUDENT'S LIBRARY 

RUSKIN'S 
SELECTIONS AND ESSAYS 

With an Introduction by 
FREDERICK WILLIAM ROE 

Assistant Professor of English at University of Wisconsin 

"Ruskin," said John Stuart Mill, "was one of the few men in 
Europe who seemed to draw what he said from a source within him- 
self." Carlyle delighted in the *'fierce lightning bolts" that Ruskin 
was "copiously and desperately pouring into the black world of 
anarchy all around him." 

The present volume, by its wide selection from Ruskin's writings, 
affords an unusual insight into this remarkable man's interests and 
character. 

THE SCARLET LETTER 

By Nathaniel Hawthorne 

With an Introduction by 
STUART P. SHERMAN 

Professor of English at University of Illinois 

" *The Scarlet Letter' appears to be as safe from competitors 
as 'Pilgrim's Progress' or 'Robinson Crusoe.' It is recognized as 
the classical treatment of its particular theme. Its symbols and 
scenes of guilt and penitence — the red letter on the breast of Hester 
Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale on the scaffold — have fixed themselves 
in the memory of men like the figure of Crusoe bending over the 
footprints in the sand, and have become a part of the common stock 
of images like Christian facing the lions in the way. 



CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK 



